EU Trade Council May 13th: CETA: 'general debate' but no vote

 

Dear all,
PowerShift's "Trade Babels"-project would like to share the following information with you regarding the upcoming May 13 EU Trade Council and CETA: 
According to a new Briefing by the German Economics/Trade Ministry CETA will be on the agenda of that meeting, but no decision will be made. 
However, this of course does not preclude the possibility that the May 13-meeting will be an important 'signalling'-moment between Member States and COM.

Best regards,
Anna Schüler & Peter Fuchs
(attachment: original German document: Briefing by the German Ministry of Economics to the Federal Parliament ahead of the EU Trade Council, May 13, 2016 - 
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ENGLISH:
Quote/Info from the German briefing for the Federal Parliament (dated April 27, 2016) on the EU Trade Council, May 13th, 2016::

The Dutch Presidency on April 20th, 2016 presented the following agenda for the May 13th, 2016 EU Trade Council:
1. WTO/“post Nairobi“.
2. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)
3. Free Trade Agreement EU/Canada (CETA).
4. Communication by COM on the state of the Steel Industry
5. Lunch: Conflict Minerals
(...)
3. FTAs ​​EU / Canada (CETA):
"Negotiations on the free trade agreement with Canada are concluded. In most recent development, during the legal scrubbing procedures the European Commission managed to largely agree with Canada on including into CETA the EU's proposals for a reformed Investment Court System in TTIP. At the Trade Ministers' Council on May 13th, 2016 there will be a general debate on the state of play and on the further steps. There will not be any decisions taken on the Signing of the agreement or on provisional application.
For these decisions to be taken one still has to wait for the translations of the agreement text into all official EU languages. This is currently expected by the end of June 2016. When sending these texts to the Council the EU Commission will submit its respective proposals for resolutions, which will then be discussed in the Council
The decision on the signing of CETA will not take place before the autumn of 2016. The German Federal Government -  like the other EU Member States - expects CETA to be a mixed agreement, which therefore must also be signed by the Member States."
 

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A
nna Schüler (Anna.Schueler@power-shift.de)
& Peter Fuchs (Peter.Fuchs@power-shift.de)

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mailto:Peter.Fuchs@power-shift.de** http://power-shift.de  Skype: peter-fuchs