Wallonia is one of the three regions forming the federal kingdom of Belgium. Although geographically the French-speaking re-gion covers more than half of the Belgian territory, with a population of 3.6 million, the Walloons constitute just under a third of the entire population of Belgium.
This small region in one of the smallest member states of the EU is stalling final agreement on the trade deal between Canada and the European Union known as CETA which stands for ‘Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement’.
In the Belgian system, the federal government in Brussels cannot sign international treaties without the agreementof the regional parliaments one ofwhich is Wallonia’s assembly. The Walloon government has raised issues relating to investment protection and demanding stronger safeguards on labour, environmental and consumer standards among others.
An EU-Canada summit was due to be held yesterday with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expected in Brussels for the signing. The Belgian federal government had been given a deadline to indicate whether it would be able to guarantee Belgium’s signature or not, in which case the summit would need to be postponed indefinitely.
Despite clarifications provided by the European Commission on Sunday, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel was unable to win over Walloon Minister President Paul Magnett. By the time I handed in this article on Wednesday, there was no breakthrough on the issue.
CETA is also being opposed by anti-globalisation groups. Many are looking at it as a test scenario to push through the even more controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement between the EU and the United States, called TTIP.
Although negotiations go on, similar concerns are being raised on TTIP. Naturally, looming at the back of our minds is another trade deal that will soon start being negotiated – that between an EU of 27 states and the UK.
No one envisages that this is going to be easy to strike even because the UK government still does not seem to know what kind of relationship it wants to forge with the EU. The EU is refusing to hold any kind of negotiations before the UK actually requests to withdraw from the union in terms of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union.
In his comments after last week’s European Council meeting, the first attended by Theresa May as prime minister, Council President Donald Tusk made it very clear that the EU heads of state and government did not discuss Brexit and that no negotiations would take place before the UK invokes Article 50. He did add, however, that “the basic principles and rules, namely the single market and indivisibility of the four freedoms, will remain our firm stance”.
Notions of national sovereignty and independence are used or abused whenever it is politically expedient
In her remarks before the meeting, May insisted that so long as the UK remains in the EU, it intends “to play a full role” and “will be a strong and dependable partner after we have left”. Her choice of words is somewhat different to those she adopted when addressing the British Conservative Party conference in Birmingham a few weeks ago where she sounded more like one of the Brexiteers. It is a fact that she had actually campaigned for the country to stay in the EU as has clearly emerged from a recording released this week of remarks she made to British bankers last May.
In Birmingham, May stated that: “We are leaving [the EU] to become, once more, a fully sovereign and independent country.” Just before, she referred tolaws being made in Westminster andnot in Brussels, judges sitting in courts across the land and not in Luxembourg and “the authority of EU law in this country ended forever”.
It’s quite ironic though that while the British Prime Minister complains about loss of sovereignty, a region in Belgium is blocking the conclusion of a trade deal between the EU single market of 500 million and the 10th largest economy in the world. It is mind-boggling since on the one hand we claim loss of sovereignty whereas in practice, both CETA and TTIP risk failure precisely because one or more of the EU’s sovereign member states are raising difficulties.
Notions of national sovereignty and independence are used or abused whenever it is politically expedient especially by national politicians all across Europe in an effort to drum up popular support and win elections. Some still speak of sovereignty as an abstract concept, forgetting about today’s political and economic context.
When the seeds of what is now the EU were sown 70 years ago, this was in response to the disastrous and tragic consequences of states claiming sovereign rights and unable to resolve conflicts through peaceful negotiation. The European project was conceived and construed to avoid a repetition of states using force to reaffirm their sovereign rights and independence as happened in the 20th century with two world wars resulting in the loss of millions of lives.
The post-World War II international context called for international organisations that would seek to preserve peace by establishing international norms and standards for the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms, trade etc. Just like in any society, individual freedoms are regulated by laws for the wellbeing of that society itself, in the international community, national sovereignty is no longer an absolute concept.
Sovereign states need to deal with one another and, moreover, there are universal values that cannot ever be subjected to the choices of one or more sovereign state.
The European Convention on Human Rights may, for instance, be construed by some as an encroachment on national sovereignty as is the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. However, God forbid we did not have this supra-national European ‘bill of rights’ that gives added protection to citizens.
In various countries, politicians are pushing dubious positions that reflect a world order that is outdated and that has failed miserably in the past. Dissatisfaction with the current situation cannot be eased by promising a return to the glorious old days, which were anything but glorious or at least glorious only for the few who were in charge. This is what Nigel Farage did in the UK and what Marin Le Pen is doing in France to mention just a couple of examples. The post- war international scenario was envisaged as one that provided for checks and balances that limit excesses in the exercise of national sovereignty.
International organisations, including the EU, were not intended to lead to a loss of sovereignty but to the pooling or sharing of sovereignty to spare the planet from the kind of catastrophes that result from notions of sovereignty and independence that belong to the Middle Ages.