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Comment by drinchev | Hacker News Reader

Super interested, why the author has not included specific reason or requests coming from Wallonia on why they don't want the deal.

I'm pretty sure these requests are based on non-corporate-political principle and that's why can't be fulfilled.

EDIT : Only thing I found is

    specifically on the symbolic issue of arbitration, which is politically extremely important

Sounds pretty vague to me.

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It grants corporations the rights to bypass national courts and directly file claims in some kind of international tribunal. But the way it's setup is really fishy to say the least.

Unfortunately in this case it also has some local political reason as the national government is a right wing government and is Pro CETA/TTIP. That is also the case with the regional Flemish right wing government. The regional Walloon government is left wing and is against. So it's a bit of an impasse.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or Ceta, was expected to boost bilateral trade, but Wallonia sees the accord as a threat to farmers and welfare standards. The region has a strong socialist tradition. Its fears echo those of anti-globalisation activists, who say Ceta and deals like it give too much power to multinationals - power even to intimidate governments.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37731955

That struck me as odd. I thought arbitration was the most important issue, not a symbolic one. Wasn't this trade deal (CETA) the back door for special-courts-for-American-multinationals?

Arbitration is a minor issue from a trade agreements point of view. The courts are not used that often, they usually side with states, and they're put in place mostly because neither country wants to give up its sovereignty to be at the mercy of the other country's courts. The natural solution is to make an a-national court to handle international disputes.

Politically, the issue has become very polarized, because even allowing an international court to settle disputes is seen as giving up sovereignty. Of course, I would love it if everyone settled in the court of my choosing, but it doesn't work that way. People also get concerned that these courts lack democratic accountability. But of course all courts lack democratic accountability...

I should add: here in the states, we worry that these courts are a backdoor for Canadian-conglomerate-friendly courts. They can't be simultaneously friendly to both the US and to Canada...

It's less about US vs. Canada (or country A vs. country B), and more about multinationals vs. citizens.

Of course, part of the problem is that citizens (and, more importantly, the representatives those citizens elect) aren't always in the right, either. Remember in the decolonialisation period how many countries nationalised formerly-productive industries, to the great loss of both overseas investors (immediately) and to their own citizens (over time, as the nationalised industries became less and less productive).

Granted, but the countries negotiating this treaty already have functional court systems to adjudicate who is wrong or right and to what degree. I strongly disagree with supplanting existing conflict resolution mechanisms that evolved over many years out of the choices of the local citizenry with an opaque, supranational entity whose rules of engagement were negotiated in secret, reflecting primarily the choices of large businesses.

The short comment in the news here was they're mostly against it to pester the Flemish, because they'd benefit more from this agreement than Wallonia.

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