Procedure over substance? CETA and the political economy of subsidiarity

Abstract

ABSTRACTCompeting notions of subsidiarity can help to understand the intricacies of new types of trade deals as concluded between Canada and the European Union. From this perspective the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) balances two fundamentally different models of economic distribution and decision making authority either giving priority to private actors and their domestic communities or to political institutions aiming for a social embedding within global markets. Examining CETA as an unusual compromise in international regulatory cooperation, this article focuses on the settlement of highly contentious issues through complex procedural innovation. While this eventually made a final agreement between trading partners with two different polities possible, it could not settle widely diverging assessments about the long-term economic effects of the new deal. As a consequence, and to build bridges between distinct spaces of subsidiarity, the final agreement represents a flexible and open-ended approach to future trade relations.