The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is certainly the most complex free trade agreement (FTA) ever negotiated by Canada and arguably the most far-reaching ever negotiated by the European Union (EU). Like North American Free Trade Agreement 1994 before it, CETA may well become a model for future mega-regional FTAs. This article explores the seeming paradox that CETA innovates both by its extensive scope and by its very extensive use of exceptions provisions. These exceptions both general and specific are examined. It is argued that these exceptions are needed because, while both parties seek much closer regulatory cooperation, they are also under pressure for legal and political reasons to be seen to preserve regulatory space.

EU-Canada negotiations for a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) were declared concluded in September 2014. Except for a few sensitive agricultural products, CETA would remove practically all tariffs on goods exchanged between the two partners, and create important new market opportunities in, among others, financial services, telecommunications, energy and maritime transport, while reserving the parties' right to regulate their internal public affairs. Canada would substantially open up its public procurement, at both federal and sub-federal level, thereby eliminating a major asymmetry in access to each other's public procurement markets. The consolidated CETA text is currently undergoing legal-linguistic review. Once this 'legal scrubbing' and the translation into all official EU languages are completed, the Commission can submit it to the Council and the European Parliament for approval. It is still to be decided whether the agreement in its entirety falls under exclusive competence of the European Union or would also touch upon Member States' competences. In the latter case, ratification by the Member States would also be necessary for the agreement to come into force. CETA brings forward a number of innovations to reform and reshape investment protection provisions in general and the investor-state-dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism in particular. Nevertheless, persistent opposition to investment protection, and ISDS in particular, has given rise to proposals to incorporate (elements of) the new investment court system (ICS) into CETA. The Commission is reportedly not pressing for including its entire ICS proposal into CETA; however, it intends to 'fine-tune' the agreement within the process of legal scrubbing. Working towards including (elements of) the ICS system into CETA could then be envisaged via the use of review clauses.

The Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada, on which negotiations were concluded at the EU-Canada Summit in Ottawa on 26 September 2014, will be a 'first' in many areas. The agreement will be the EU's first with another highly industrialised country to facilitate market access for goods, services and investment by abolishing almost all tariffs and reducing a wide array of non-tariff barriers. CETA is also the first agreement to have been negotiated with a sound chapter on investment protection, (including Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions) {OCLCbr#D0}– an area that is, since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, an EU competence. The EU and Canada have agreed to improve regulatory cooperation without compromising existing safety standards, and CETA includes protection for more than 145 food products with geographical indications (GIs). The agreement preserves the governments' right to regulate in the public interest. The European Parliament will be asked to give its consent to this agreement and to the parallel Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) {OCLCbr#D0}– a process that is likely to take two years. This will give the Parliament sufficient time to weigh potential public concerns {OCLCbr#D0}– which today are focussed principally on trade and investment negotiations with the US, but may spill over onto this agreement with Canada.

On 26 September 2014 the European Union and Canada announced the conclusion of the negotiations of a new agreement that would open the doors for new business opportunities and enhanced economic co-operation, creating a trade bridge between two economic powers. The EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is a secondgeneration agreement, since it is not merely focused on the abolition of tariffs but more properly on the abolition of nontariff barriers. The agreement also contains innovative stateto-state dispute settlement provisions. The purpose of this article is to analyze these provisions but also to underline the extent to which they represent an innovation in comparison with the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU). In order to do so, the article offers an overview of the major salient issues on dispute settlement in preferential trade agreements as well as on the EU-Canada CETA state-to-state dispute settlement provisions and compares the latter to the WTO DSU. The analysis sheds light on the rather more simple nature of the EU-Canada CETA dispute settlement chapter compared to that of the WTO DSU because of the absence of an appellate review stage, which will probably be balanced by a more incisive role for the CETA Joint Committee. The analysis of the contours of the dispute settlement chapter of the CETA concludes with the identification of the major similarities with the WTO DSU but also by identifying the major improvements in the EUCanada CETA, if compared with the WTO DSU. Ultimately, this article shows how CETA has reinforced the economic partnership between the European Union and Canada without disregarding civil society participation and transparency in the dispute settlement phase.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of "Mega-Regionals", the new generation of trans-regional free-trade agreements (FTAs) currently under negotiation, and their effect on the future of international economic law. The main focus centres on the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), but the findings are also applicable to similar agreements under negotiation, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).The specific features of Mega-Regional Trade Agreements raise a number of issues with respect to their potential effect on the current system of international trade and investment law. These include the consequences of Mega-Regionals for the most-favoured-nation (MFN) principle, their relation to the multilateral system of the World Trade Organization (WTO), their democratic legitimacy and their interaction with existing bilateral investment treaties (BITs).The book is intended for academics and practitioners working in the field of international economic law.