The Commission is setting a brisk pace for already started and future trade agreements. If the Commission has its way, some agreements should be concluded before the end of the year - hence leaving much possibilities for civil society involvement.

Last week, a joint meeting of the European Parliament’s Trade and Women’s Committee discussed the extent to which EU trade policy has an impact on gender inequality. The findings are mixed. It has, however, become clear that trade policy is not gender-neutral, but usually gender-blind. And this is exactly what should be changed in the future.

Within the framework of the compulsory impact assessment that must go hand in hand with new dossiers, the Commission has launched a public consultation on the establishment of a permanent investment dispute settlement mechanism. The questionnaire that is presented in the consultation is based on the assumption, that the respondent agrees in principle with the investment dispute settlement regime and that isolated improvements of the investor-to-state dispute settlement mechanism will help legitimise the system itself.

This week, the Commission updated members of the civil society on the current progress of modernising the Free Trade Agreement with Mexico. Apart from the Commission, representatives of both the Mexican government and the Mexican civil society, who were also in Brussels as part of the third negotiation round this week, participated in the dialogue.

Global value-added chains - most of which also include offshoring and outsourcing - are now accounting for three quarters of global trade. A good opportunity for multinational companies to avoid taxes as well as high labour and envorinmental standards. This makes clear rules, which are now demanded in a report of the International Trade Committee in the European Parliament, even more important.

The Federal Chamber of Labour (BAK) is currently opposed to the adaptation/modernisation and to the extension of the EU-Turkey bilateral preferential trade relations. As long as the human rights situation and therefore the exercise of trade union rights does not improve significantly, incentives in the trade policy field would send the wrong signals.

One year has passed since the Resolution concerning the controversial Trade in Services Agreement “TiSA” has been adopted by the European Parliament. Even more necessary was therefore the interim balance, which was drawn last week at a conference in the so-called Intergroup on Common Goods & Public Services in the European Parliament.

A public hearing on trade defence instruments took place this week before the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade. Various experts discussed the modernisation of trade defence instruments and a new calculation method for dumping.

For the last time this week, a heated and emotional debate about the Free Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA) took place in the European Parliament. In the end, only 254 MEPs voted against CETA, 408 in favour and 33 abstained. This means that the much criticised Agreement will enter into force provisionally. It is now on national and regional Parliaments of the Member States because CETA will only be fully effective once the Agreement has been ratified by all Parliaments.

Seven years after negotiations began on the EU–Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), political leaders appear finally ready to sign the deal at a ceremony in Brussels in October. Much has changed since then. For Europe, CETA started as a low-profile agreement with broad, if mostly disinterested, political support. It is now the target of a resurgent progressive coalition of social justice groups, environmental organisations andlabour, who perceive the deal, correctly, as a threat to democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.