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Green Party TD lodges High Court challenge over controversial CETA trade deal
The trade deal has divided the Green Party with Costello and TD Neasa Hourigan signalling they will not back the deal. By Cónal Thomas Wednesday 3 Mar 2021, 10:01 AM Mar 3rd 2021, 10:01 AM 18,562 Views 0 Comments
TD Patrick Costello
TD Patrick Costello
A GREEN PARTY TD has lodged a High Court challenge against his own Government over the controversial international trade deal CETA.
Patrick Costello, TD for Dublin South Central, lodged the challenge on Monday against the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada.
Costello told his parliamentary party, including the leadership, on Monday evening after the legal challenge was lodged.
26th February, 2021
The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta) is a free-trade agreement between Canada and the EU. Picture: Getty
Advocates of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), and the proposed Investment Court System (ICS) in particular, are eager to characterise it as simply a tool for interpreting and giving effect to the obligations in a treaty, in this case the EU Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta). In the Irish Times’s editorial view: “ICS critics must explain how they would instead structure what is indispensable to any treaty – a mechanism for its interpretation.”
Yet far from being an obvious or common-sense mechanism for doing this, ISDS/ICS is an outlier among international legal mechanisms, and in many ways the least attractive of the options available. (Putting the question in this way also assumes that the relevant substantive protections for investors are ones we should endorse. Many critics of ISDS/ICS would
THE controversial EU-Canada trade deal is to be referred to an Oireachtas committee in a bid to prevent a damaging split in the Green Party.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan have agreed that the EU’s Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada will be referred to the Oireachtas European Affairs Committee for further scrutiny.
The move further delays a Dáil vote on a motion to ratify CETA which would have seen a number of Green TDs, including prominent backbencher Neasa Hourigan, vote against their own party.
“I can confirm that discussions have been ongoing at leader level in relation to the trade deal and that yesterday it was agreed to put it to [the] Oireachtas Committee as the best way to manage it,” Mr Ryan’s spokesman confirmed to Independent.ie on Wednesday.