Today the German Federal Constitutional Court allowed the German Government to sign CETA – the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the European Union and Canada. The Court was asked to take this dicision by over 190.000 gemran prosecutors, who first tried to stop CETA politically and now taking judicial actions. Thereby it is the biggest lawsuit in German history. The opponents of this Freetrade-Agreement see many dangerous impacts for society, environment and democracy if CETA will be implemented.
The judicial decision is not taken finally. The court didn't evaluated the substance of the Agreement, but decided whether the act of signment would be already an act against german constituion. The EU plans to sign CETA in one week. Therefore the court judged that the german government is allowed to sign the contract under heavy conditions. The most important condition is that Germany has to stay able to leave the contract, as long as the court didn't judged the substance of CETA – what they gonna do at the beginning of next year.
The rush of this first decision became needed after the EU plans to bring CETA into effect without waiting for the decisions of the national parliaments of the EU Member States. The court decided that this provisional implementation is just allowed for terms of the agreement which are only in the responsibility of the European Union itself and not affecting the Member States.
Aside from many complaints about the dangerous impacts of CETA, the Agreement includes terms, which affect the constitutional framework of the EU. CETA sets up a so called "regulatory council". All decisions, taken by the EU, are forced to be be explained infront of this new institution before. The plan is to avoid barriers of trade in advance. This is a pretty much danger for democracy, because every political decision will be screened if it handicaps the free market. So the primacy of politics will even more change to the primacy of economy.
In German CETA is called the pioneer of TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the EU and USA. They are negotiating about a free trade zone also, which would become the biggest trading zone of the world – with more than a half of the world wide trading volume.
Both, CETA and TTIP are very much criticised in German publicity. A lot of Non Governmental Organizations are working together to stop this neoliberal treaties. The campaigns of mobilizations are the most successfull in recent german and european history.
So the fight against overwhelming globalization, unstopable capitalism and the power of big companies will go on!