CETA, an Innovative Agreement with Many Unsettled Trajectories

Abstract

Can trade agreements integrate innovations and progressive dispositions? In this era of fast changes linked to globalization and technological changes which fuel discontent, this question has emerged in the literature and in the negotiation processes of many recent agreements. In the first section of this article, we will introduce the structural changes that are beneath the surface of recent trade agreements using a typology of trade agreements enabling comparative analysis. In the second section, we will discuss some of the most important innovations of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) negotiated by Canada and the European Union. In the third section, we will see that part of the innovative nature of CETA, its evolutionary nature, brings many unsettled trajectories. In the fourth section, we will discuss how CETA is further unsettled in its trajectory because it puts into relation two distinctive integration models highlighted in our typology, one developed in Europe and the other in North America and, furthermore, because of the more general context that also puts into play Asia and China as emerging shapers of economic trade agreements.