ABSTRACT
The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) came into effect provisionally in September 2017. The agreement reduces tariff lines to zero, opens up public procurement markets, entails forms of regulatory cooperation and provides a new investor-state dispute regime. In the European Union as well as in Canada open trade coalitions lobbied hard to make CETA happen. In contrast to widely held objections, the Canadian coalition showed a high level of coherence; the European open trade coalition was much less resilient against civil society pressure opposing CETA. When the European Commission against its own will had to declare CETA to be a mixed agreement, the fate of CETA was passed from Brussels to national and subfederal political entities.
