After much debate, the Walloon majority finally approves the agreement with Panama

The critics of the opposition, furious at not having received the note of the Walloon government adopting the guidelines mentioned by the cdH, will have changed nothing: the Walloon majority MR-cdH approved, Wednesday evening, the draft decree approving the agreement between the Belgo-Luxembourg Economic Union (BLEU), on the one hand, and the Republic of Panama, on the other hand. "This agreement poses a lot of problems, which have been relayed by civil society," said in the afternoon Anne Lambelin (PS). In particular, it denounced the existence of a private ISDS arbitration mechanism that allows large companies to challenge a decision made by the public authorities that would be against their economic interests. "A mechanism that allows those who have the means to hope to increase their profits to the detriment of the general interest," she still regretted.

"Not only this text does not respect the guidelines set by the Parliament of Wallonia in the debate on Ceta (the Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and Canada, Ed), but it does not even respect the commitments made by the MR-cdH coalition in its own resolution of February 28, 2018 ", had added Hélène Ryckmans (Ecolo). "By partnering with the MR, the cdH had already retracted its own position on CETA two years ago, and now both MR and cdH are coming back to their own positions just four months ago." (19659003) The opposition was not heard, however, the CDH brandishing the guidelines it obtained from the Walloon government. The latter agreed, in a new note, to specify that the text is evolutionary and that it can be gradually modernized in order to take into account the evolutions of the society and the international trade as the negotiations of the future treaties are negotiated. 19659003] "I prefer moving the lines rather than blowing them up," said Jean-Paul Wahl, the MR group leader in the Walloon Parliament.