Wallonia clears CETA's Belgian roadblock

A Belgian regional parliament has done what several national governments still have not: moved CETA, the EU-Canada trade deal, one step closer to full ratification. The Parliament of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, a French-speaking legislative body in Belgium, voted on 24 June 2026 to approve the agreement it helped stop nearly a decade ago.

This is not Belgian eccentricity. It is how EU treaty law works when a deal crosses the line between Brussels powers and national powers. The economics can move ahead; the politics may take years to catch up.

A deal that works before it's finished

CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, removes tariffs on almost all goods traded between the EU and Canada, opens Canadian public procurement to European firms, and lowers barriers for services and investment (European Commission). Most of it has been provisionally applied since September 2017. Businesses already trade under it. Treaty committees still meet; Canada scheduled a CETA Financial Services Committee session in Brussels for 23-24 June 2026.

What has not yet been switched on is the Investment Court System, or ICS. This is a treaty tribunal where foreign investors can sue governments for compensation if a state breaches the investment protections promised under CETA. In plain terms, it gives cross-border companies a legal route outside ordinary national courts.

The ICS was kept out of provisional application because that part of the agreement belongs to national governments as well as the EU. To activate it, every EU country must ratify.

In Belgium, ratification is not a single federal vote. The constitution divides treaty-making power between the federal state, three regions and three communities, each with its own parliament. CETA is a "mixed agreement", meaning it touches both EU-level and national competences. Belgium therefore cannot wave it through from the centre. Its sub-national legislatures must consent too.

Who gains, who loses

That legal machinery would be a technical footnote if there were no losers. But Wallonia's parliament blocked the EU from even signing CETA in October 2016, and the argument behind that stand has not disappeared.

Belgium's business federation AKT said firms had been waiting years for legal certainty. Exporters, logistics companies and larger firms able to bid for Canadian public contracts benefit from lower friction and clearer rules.

Farmers see a different bargain. Belgium's agricultural union FUGEA urged deputies to reject CETA, arguing that Canadian beef and pork entering through tariff-rate quotas (fixed volumes allowed in at lower tariffs) put unfair pressure on livestock farmers already working with tight margins.

Both sides have a case. The commercial benefits are already available to firms able to use them. The full investor-protection system, which worries farmers and sovereignty critics most, still depends on parliaments that may never move in the same direction.

Belgium is not the bottleneck alone

The same story is playing out elsewhere in Europe, just through different constitutional routes. France's Constitutional Council cleared CETA in 2017, but the French Senate rejected ratification in March 2024 after agricultural and sovereignty objections. The Netherlands approved CETA in its lower house, but the Senate has not completed the process. In Ireland, a Sinn Féin MEP sued the Government over legislation passed to facilitate ratification.

The EU's Court of Justice has ruled that the ICS is compatible with EU law. That answers the legal question. It does not settle the political one: foreign investors would have a legal path that local firms and citizens do not.

There is no single public EU tracker confirming exactly how many member states have fully ratified CETA as of June 2026. France's Senate rejection has no clear resolution. The Dutch and Irish processes remain open. Belgium's internal process may still require further parliamentary steps beyond this week's vote.

The EU can negotiate trade agreements and apply most of them provisionally for years. Tariffs fall, procurement opens, services move more freely. But the most contested protections, the ones that allow foreign investors to bypass national courts, still rely on dozens of parliaments across 27 countries. Companies trade under CETA today. Whether they ever get the full treaty remains a question no single parliament can answer, and no single parliament can settle.