Report on Mobilization, with Artis Pabriks
27.01.2017

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Artis Pabriks (Unity), the European Parliament Member appointed as the EP's chief rapporteur on the EU-Canada free-trade agreement (CETA) presented an informative, interesting and concise overview of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Canada/European Union free trade agreement. See http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/countries/canada/. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and European leaders signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement known as CETA on October 30th, 2016 after seven years of negotiation. CETA received the green light on January 24th, 2017 from the Members of the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee who gave their consent to the ratification of CETA. CETA is expected to be approved by the European Parliament on February 15th, 2017 after which it will go to EU member countries for ratification. However, provisions of CETA will come into effect on a provisional basis upon approval of the EU and Canadian parliaments which means that businesses will be able to start reaping CETA’s benefits as early as this spring.

Some of the main factors about CETA to note include:

• CETA is the first comprehensive international trade agreement in that it eliminates almost all trade barriers and bureaucracy associated with the sale of goods and services,
• CETA is particularly significant to small and medium businesses as it not only eliminates most tariffs, but it also simplifies procedures that smaller companies have not been able to afford to deal with in the past to enter these markets. This is particularly important for Latvia.
• CETA provides a decided advantage to establishing business with Canada over the United States of America, since the US/EU free trade agreement is being questioned.
• Since Canada has a population of 35 million and the EU – 500 million, Canada will be looking to the EU as a potential major market. Latvia offers not only entry into the EU, but is also a natural bridge into Russia and CIS countries. Since small and medium business are an inherent component of the Canadian economic landscape, partnering with Latvian business can be an attractive proposition.
• It must be remembered that Canada is also part of the North American free trade zone, and a member of the Asia-Pacific free trade zone. This gives Canadian entrepreneurs a choice for which direction to go.

• CanCham work groups were introduced to the membership which included Business Support lead by Inta Cinite, Export - Eriks Seminovs, Business Travel, Tourism & Recreation - Karina Krivorota, Medical Tourism - Kintija Barloti and Inguna Gustava, Advertising and Promotion - Jan Welitz and Arvids Godjuks, Construction Related Services - Ed Kalvins. The CanCham is preparing its members to reach out to new clients and new opportunities, and especially take advantage of the new CETA agreement.
• Upcoming events listed in http://cancham.lv/events.

The CanCham member providing a company presentation this evening was Vides eksperti, www.videseksperti.lv Ivars Pavasars - Environmental Projects

Presentations can be found at http://cancham.lv/cancham-members/presentations.

Please follow http://cancham.lv/news and www.facebook.com/canchamlatvia/ for updates.