MEPs approved EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) during this week's plenary session of the European Parliament followed by a visit by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau telling them how the EU-Canada trade deal was not just about commerce, but also about improving people's lives. View highlights in Czech and English. Read AmCham EU statement on CETA.

Canada outlines new opportunities for Canadian exporters in the areas of Aerospace, Agriculture, Automotive, Clean Tech, Communication Technologies, Infrastructure, Medical Devices, Metals, Mining & Minerals, Pharmaceuticals, etc. CBC News mentions cheaper cars, more cheese and higher drug prices, among others.

Canada is EU's 12th largest trading partner (EU is the second largest trading partner for Canada) and the 3rd largest investor in the EU (EU is the 4th largest investor in Canada). View infographic in Czech.

Politico.eu posts talk about a win for Europe’s telecoms and tech firms, and pharma lobby IP gains in Canada trade deal, adding that CETA meets the increasingly urgent challenge of opening modern economies to a broader scope of free trade. Europe’s economies are hungry for more external trade: 14 percent of workers already depend on it directly. In today’s world, where margins are razor-thin, our businesses can no longer afford tariffs and unwarranted barriers. We can’t afford to have China eat our lunch...

The EU is Canada’s second biggest trading partner after the U.S., and the fourth largest foreign investor in Europe. This is why Canada has accepted all of Europe’s conditions in the negotiation of this agreement, ensuring full protection for European agricultural, manufacturing and service industries while creating major opportunities across all areas of the economy. As well as removing many other obstacles, CETA will eliminate all duties on industrial goods, saving European exporters almost €600 million a year. Overall, the agreement is expected to increase trade in goods and services between the EU and Canada by nearly a quarter, lifting EU output by about €12 billion a year.

And these expectations are based on experience. The free-trade agreement with South Korea led to over 200,000 jobs being created; Canada’s economy is nearly 30 percent bigger than South Korea’s, EP representatives wrote.

The implementation of CETA must still be ratified by the Canadian Senate and EU Member States national parliaments.This could take years.

Earlier the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade published an analysis showing that the impacts of CETA on the Czech economy should be marginal, unlike opportunities for Czech business the deal offers. Czech MEP Pavel Poc, for example, sees higher quotas for imports of Canadian pork meat as a threat. More details in Czech.