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elni Forum 2016: "Assessing CETA's impact on Environmental Law"

The ELNI forum on "Assessing CETA's impact on Environmental Law", organised at the joint initiative of CEDRE and ELNI, took place on 8 September 2016 at Université Saint-Louis, Brussels.

A small group of environmental lawyers debated intensively different aspects of the far-reaching CETA agreement and its impact on environmental law in Europe in particular. Delphine Misonne gave an introduction on the potential impact of CETA on environmental law, Laurens Ankersmit and Wybe Th. Douma analysed the dispute settlement schemes under CETA and shortcomings of the agreement concerning sustainability and precautionary aspects. Nicolas de Sadeleer then explained the sophisticated ratification process for CETA and the legal uncertainty surrounding it.

Details of these analyses can be found in the articles of Delphine Misonne, Laurens Ankersmit and Wybe Th. Douma, published in elni Review 2016/2.

Besides a number of legal details, the interesting general aspect of who should negotiate such types of agreements arose during the discussion in the Forum. Given that CETA claims to be a progressive environmental agreement (which it is obviously not), it must be criticised that it has been negotiated only by trade experts and not by environmental experts. Whatever the outcome of this dossier is in the end, it has to be noted that public pressure and the scientific debate improved the Agreement considerably, even though it is still not sufficient from an environmental point of view.

 

Agenda

Introduction – Why Could the EU-Canada Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement Have an Impact on Environmental Law?
(Prof Delphine Misonne, USL-B)

Dispute Settlement under CETA
(Laurens Ankersmit, Client Earth) 

Which Ratification Process for CETA? - CETA and the Precautionary Principle
(Prof Nicolas de Sadeleer, USL-B) 

Conclusions
(Prof Gerhard Roller, Bingen University & Prof Delphine Misonne, USL-B)