(Paris) The draft ratification of CETA, a free trade treaty between the EU and Canada applied provisionally since 2017, will not be transmitted to the National Assembly before the end of the year at best, the minister said on Wednesday French delegate for Foreign Trade Franck Riester.
“The ratification text will return to the National Assembly when the time comes,” the minister said on Radio J, after having said in March that the vote would not take place before the European elections.
On March 21, thanks to a convenient left-right alliance, the Senate opposed the ratification of the treaty, which constituted an embarrassing disappointment for the government before the European elections.
In the process, the communist deputies announced their intention to include the text in their reserved parliamentary time –– their “niche” scheduled for May 30 in the Assembly -, ten days before the European elections (Sunday June 9 in France ), but the government seemed to want to delay in submitting the text to the Palais Bourbon.
This will arrive on the benches of the assembly “not during an electoral period so that it is not used for electoral purposes and when we have a provisional assessment made by the (European) Commission, which will be rendered by the end of 2024,” Mr. Riester detailed on Wednesday.
Another deadline set by the minister: “When the parliamentary mission desired by the Prime Minister on mirror measures, these measures which allow reciprocity in production standards”, will have been completed, “again by the end of 2024, beginning of 2025 “, he added.
In the event of rejection of CETA by French MPs, the equation would then become very complex for the government: either it notifies Brussels that it cannot ratify the treaty and this would result in the end of its provisional application for all of Europe; or he procrastinates, at the risk of attracting the wrath of oppositions who will cry out for democratic denial.