CETA has other more traditional detractors who hate the fact that it also hacks away at 99% of customs duties between Canada and the EU. Wallonia boasts one cow for every three humans and its lavishly subsidised farmers are wary of cheap Canadian competition. Erwin Schöpges, a Walloon dairy farmer who joined the protests outside parliament, says he already faces milk prices below his production costs. “We want to trade with Canada, but we would rather not abolish tariffs,” he says.
In any trade deal there are winners and losers: the former, more numerous; the latter, more passionate. The Belgian government may buy off its farmers, but even so more hurdles await. CETA must be ratified by 38 regional and national EU parliaments before it can be implemented fully. Mr Schöpges says the protest in Wallonia was less lively than the one he attended in Hamburg a few weeks earlier; opposition in Germany and France could just as easily derail proceedings.
CETA would make Europe €11.8 billion a year richer, by one estimate. But the real danger of letting Wallonia derail it is the precedent it would set. With so many potential vetoes, says Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, it is hard to imagine the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (a much bigger deal between America and the EU) being passed. And as for Britain’s prospects after Brexit, Ms Malmstrom says: “if we can’t make (a deal) with Canada, I’m not sure we can make (one) with the UK.”
Correction (November 4th): an earlier version of this article cited an EU estimate of the benefit to Europe's economy from CETA as $5.8 billion per year. That figure refers only to trade in services. Including trade in goods, the total estimated benefit is $11.8 billion per year.
