{"id":21341,"date":"2016-07-03T15:15:24","date_gmt":"2016-07-03T20:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21341"},"modified":"2016-07-03T15:15:24","modified_gmt":"2016-07-03T20:15:24","slug":"desperately-trying-to-salvage-canada-eu-trade-pact-after-brexit-eu-escalates-assault-on-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21341","title":{"rendered":"Desperately Trying to Salvage Canada-EU Trade Pact after Brexit, EU Escalates Assault on Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2016\/07\/02\/to-save-canada-eu-trade-pact-ceta-eu-assaults-democratic\/\">Desperately Trying to Salvage Canada-EU Trade Pact after Brexit, EU Escalates Assault on Democracy<\/a><\/h3>\n<h2 class=\"entry-meta\"><\/h2>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>The European Commission, it seems, will never learn. Despite the existential crisis caused by Britain\u2019s decision to leave the EU and the serious questions being raised about the EU\u2019s gaping lack of democratic legitimacy, the European Commission just escalated its assault on European democracy. This week the Commission announced that it would ratify CETA, the controversial trade deal between Canada and the EU, as a unilateral EU agreement, not as a so-called mixed agreement.<\/p>\n<p>What that means is that the national parliaments of the 27 remaining EU member states will have no influence whatsoever over the approval process, even though (or more likely because) the trade agreement will have huge, sweeping effects on the society, governance, and economy of all the nations concerned. In other words, the EU\u2019s democratic deficit, one of the decisive factors in Britain\u2019s decision to sever the cord from Brussels, just got a whole lot bigger. Yet it was barely reported in the press.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s more from\u00a0<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.euractiv.com\/section\/trade-society\/news\/eu-leaders-on-collision-course-with-commission-over-ceta\/\">Euractiv<\/a><\/em>, one of the few English-language media outlets that actually bothered to cover the story:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reportedly told EU leaders on Tuesday (28 June) that the Commission considers the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) an \u201cEU-only\u201d agreement and would propose next week (5 July) a simple approval procedure\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe agreement we have made with Canada is the best agreement the EU has ever made,\u201d Juncker said, insisting that the Commission had come to the conclusion that CETA was not a mixed agreement, after a detailed analysis. \u201cBut if the member states decide legal opinions are not valid in politics then I am the last person that would stand in their way.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Desperately Trying to Salvage Canada-EU Trade Pact after Brexit, EU Escalates Assault on Democracy The European Commission, it seems, will never learn. Despite the existential crisis caused by Britain\u2019s decision to leave the EU and the serious questions being raised about the EU\u2019s gaping lack of democratic legitimacy, the European Commission just escalated its assault [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[93,103,204,5660,279,2535,805,4255],"class_list":["post-21341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","tag-britain","tag-canada","tag-democracy","tag-don-quijones","tag-eu","tag-european-commission","tag-trade","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21342,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21341\/revisions\/21342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}