Canadian Free Trade Agreement with the EU vetoes by the Walloons; Australia’s EU free trade agreement at risk, by Mick Miller.

The Canada FTA, known by the acronym CETA, has been all but vetoed by the regional government of Wallonia in south Belgium.

It was supposed to be signed this Thursday, but the French-speaking Walloons don’t like the deal’s terms. Their local socialist government objected that it gave too much power to multinationals to override government regulations.

The EU is a joke. No accountability, no real democracy, just bureaucrats and dishonesty. Britain signed up for a free trade arrangement (the common market) in 1975, which somehow obligated them to allow in uncontrolled numbers and types pf immigrants in 2016. No wonder Brexit.

UPDATE: Belgian politicians drop opposition to EU-Canada trade deal, by Jennifer Rankin.

The Belgian compromise – a four-page text that sits alongside the 1,600-page treaty – was approved by ambassadors from 28 EU member states on Thursday afternoon. …

The comprehensive economic and trade agreement … has been seven years in the making.

A real free trade agreement would take about 5 minutes to write. What we have instead are hundreds of pages of rules.

hat-tip Matthew