Canada and EU add climate clause to trade pact
In a move that underscored Donald Trump’s isolation on trade and climate change, the two major economies inserted a reference to the Paris Agreement into Ceta.
As EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström visited Canadian minister Jim Carr, they adopted an update to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta), which entered into force last year. The two economies agreed to “promote the mutual supportiveness of trade and climate policies”, with reference to their commitment to the Paris Agreement.
The statement fleshed out Ceta’s provisions for environmental cooperation and underscored US president Donald Trump’s isolation on trade and climate change. It came shortly after French president Emmanuel Macron told the UN countries rejecting the Paris pact should not benefit from economy-wide commercial deals.
Asked by Bloomberg if that ruled out a trade pact with Trump’s US, Macron said: “With America disrespecting the Paris Agreement, for sure, I could not accept…we are asking a lot of efforts [from] our farmers, our industrials, our citizens precisely to make such a shift [to a low carbon economy]. If you opened your market to products and goods coming from a country that decided not to accept the same rules and constraints, it would be totally crazy.”
Trump has declared his intention to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement and started dismantling policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, he has pursued protectionist trade policies, using his speech at the UN general assembly this week to denounce “globalism”. Malmström has said any new trade deal must mention the Paris pact, although commission president Jean-Claude Juncker took a softer stance on a visit to Washington DC in July.
Climate Home
On Tuesday, 4 June, seven foreign ministers, 19 ambassadors, several ministers and more than 200 experts met in Berlin to act on climate security risks at the Berlin Climate and Security Conference. "Achieving the international climate targets is the new imperative of our foreign policy”, the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, said in his opening speech. This is the aim of the Berlin Call for Action which was presented at the conference.
Governments must invest new effort and money to prevent climate change from driving new conflicts, according to a diplomatic statement drafted by the German foreign office.
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