Emmanuel Macron’s lonely battle to defend the EU-Canada trade deal

OTTAWA — French President Emmanuel Macron’s latest visit to Canada might give him a first taste of his new normal.

During his trip Montreal and Ottawa on the heels of the United Nations General Assembly, Macron is expected to devote time to defending the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the European Union and Canada.

Though the chapters of CETA on the free trade of goods provisionally entered into force in 2017, some national parliaments of EU countries still have to ratify it and, at least on paper, can block its further implementation.

But with a majority of EU member countries already having backed CETA, it’s highly unlikely France could muster the votes to overturn the entire accord — despite any fantastical promises offered by protectionist French lawmakers and members of the country’s new government, which was announced on Saturday.

While CETA has benefited many French farmers and manufacturers, the agreement has fallen victim to hostile politics and public opinion. It is opposed by French farmers who fear competition from their Canadian counterparts, by environmental NGOs and almost all political parties except for Macron’s own. The French Senate rejected the treaty in a vote earlier this year and the new government leans more protectionist than its predecessors.

With new Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard and junior Trade Minister Sophie Primas openly opposing the deal and a parliamentary majority ready to vote it down, it will be even harder for Macron to give Canada the type of assurances on CETA’s future that Ottawa will likely be looking for.

“He has to be extremely careful, to show intelligence, and not to declare his support for CETA because he is going to turn a lot of people against him,” said André Chassaigne, a communist lawmaker who authored a resolution to hold a new parliamentary vote on CETA.

Roland Lescure, France’s previous industry minister and a lawmaker representing French citizens living in Canada and the United states, said he is concerned that the backlash against CETA and Paris’ protectionist turn could imperil future trade negotiations.

“It is a treaty that has benefited all French sectors and done no harm … if we can’t sign a free trade treaty with Canada, with whom can we?” he told POLITICO.

Parliamentary backlash 

When the Senate delivered its first blow to CETA, it forced then-Prime Minister Gabriel Attal to quickly embark on a damage-control mission to reassure Ottawa that France still backed the deal.  

Attal is now gone, and in his place is Michel Barnier — a member of the right-wing Les Républicains, a party that played a decisive role in voting down the trade pact in the Senate.

Macron’s opponents, including Les Républicains, wanted to follow up their first strike against CETA with a vote in the more powerful lower house of the French legislature, the National Assembly. The previous government refused to bring the issue to a vote and instead proposed delaying discussions until after the European election in June.

After the far-right National Rally triumphed at the EU vote, Macron called a snap parliamentary election which resulted in a hung parliament with no clear majority. It did, however, return more protectionists to the National Assembly, meaning that the EU-Canada trade deal would have little or no chance of surviving a parliamentary vote.

This time, instead of defending the deal, the French government — led by Barnier, Genevard and Primas — could join the chorus of CETA opponents and try to bring it down.

That is despite the fact that, in the EU, the bloc’s 27 member countries delegate responsibility for trade policy to its Brussels-based executive. Seventeen have already ratified CETA — which means that France, even if it wanted to overturn the deal, would likely fail in the face of the overwhelming pro-deal majority.

The only immediate consequence of a rejection would be that some provisions of the deal, including those setting up a dispute resolution authority in charge of deciding cases related to the deal, wouldn’t enter into force.

Barnier’s dilemma

French exports to Canada have increased by 33 percent between 2017, the year the deal went into effect, and 2023, according to data from the French foreign ministry. But France’s major farmer lobby FNSEA opposes CETA as it fears that rise Canadian imports could come at the expense of French agriculture.

On the other side of the Atlantic, some are also unhappy with a deal that they believe have benefited EU exporters more than Canadians.

“I struggle to find anybody in Canadian agriculture that thinks that this agreement has benefited Canada,” John Masswahl of the Canadian Cattlemen Association said. “The Europeans have got beef and cheese [exports] and we have got nothing.”

Even if the National Assembly gets an opportunity to vote on the deal and reject it, there would be no immediate consequences. The French government can still decide whether or not to notify the failure of the ratification process to Brussels — as fellow EU member Cyprus has done.

If the new French government decided to ignore the parliamentary vote and refused to notify, “it would of course be very much criticized,” said Elvire Fabry, a trade expert at the Jacques Delors institute.

Under EU rules, if an EU country tells Brussels that it failed to ratify CETA, “provisional application must be and will be terminated.”

But things are more complex as, after that, the European Commission would have to draft a proposal to terminate the provisional application of the deal and that proposal has to be adopted by a qualified majority — in other words, at least 15 member countries representing 65 percent of the EU population.

Some hope that Barnier and Les Républicains could change their minds now that they are governing with Macron,

Barnier’s party did initially support the pact when negotiations between Brussels and Ottawa began in 2009, when Nicolas Sarkozy was president, only to oppose it under Macron for political purposes.

Whatever happens, France’s attitude towards CETA will be watched closely in Brussels as it will show whether, with this new government, France will oppose other free-trade deals that are under discussion. While Macron may be supportive of CETA, he has strongly opposed an accord between the EU and the South American countries of the Mercosur bloc.

“In France today there are not many people still in favor of trade agreements,” said Fabry.

Giorgio Leali reported from Paris. Kyle Duggan reported from Ottawa.