Gian Marco Centinaio, Italy’s agriculture minister and a senator from the far-right League, said in an interview with La Stampa on Thursday that the government would ask parliament “not to ratify Ceta and other similar treaties”.
“Doubts about this deal are shared among many European colleagues. This is not just the position of the League’s nationalists,” he said.
The League and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, whose coalition government took office this month, have been staunchly critical of free trade agreements negotiated by Brussels in recent years.
In their joint policy platform, the parties said they would “oppose aspects [of trade deals] that would involve an excessive weakening of citizens’ rights, and inflict damage on fair and sustainable competition in the internal market”.
[The new Italian government] will oppose aspects [of trade deals] that would involve an excessive weakening of citizens’ rights, and inflict damage on fair and sustainable competition in the internal market – Joint policy statement of League and Five Star
To the surprise of the EU, Ceta evolved into one of the most politically charged trade deals ever signed by the union. After months of fraught negotiations, including with defiant regional governments in Belgium, EU member states approved Ceta’s provisional application in 2016, allowing much of it to come into effect last year.
The full ratification process is continuing, with 12 member states giving the agreement the green light, including Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Austria. Some other countries, including France, are still concerned about securing enough votes in their parliaments.
EU officials say serious problems would only arise at the point at which a country such as Italy took a formal position against Ceta, notifying Brussels that its rejection was “permanent and irreversible”.
Such a notification would deal a near-fatal blow to the Ceta agreement — and blow apart the legal basis for the provisional application of its terms. If one parliament did not ratify Ceta, it would be up to EU national governments to discuss the next steps, said an EU official.
Trade — along with fiscal policy, banking regulations and sanctions on Russia — is one of the areas in which Italy’s new government has vowed to defy Brussels, but it still remains unclear how antagonistic Rome will be.
It is far from clear how aggressively the Italian government would pursue a hardline stance on trade, given that it was not a big theme in the March general election and Italy is an export-dependent economy.
As agriculture minister, Mr Centinaio would be just one of the politicians involved in a decision as important as scuppering an EU trade deal. Others would include Enzo Moavero, the foreign minister, and Luigi Di Maio, the leader of Five Star and minister of economic development, which has primary responsibility for trade. The foreign ministry and the economic development ministry declined to comment.
Mr Centinaio may be taking a particularly aggressive line as he tries to curry favour with Coldiretti. Italy’s main farm lobby group opposes Ceta because it does not go far enough in protecting geographic indications on food products, such as Parmesan cheese.
But EU officials point out that 28 per cent of all the European geographical indicators protected in Ceta are Italian. Coldiretti has also complained about Italian pasta makers being excessively reliant on Canadian wheat, though some producers rely on foreign wheat to keep prices affordable.
If the pact with Canada were to unravel because of opposition in Rome, it would bode very poorly for other budding EU trade agreements, including ones with Japan and with the Mercosur countries of Latin America.
The EU has sought to position itself as a bulwark against rising protectionism driven by Donald Trump’s administration in Washington — and trade was the main point of friction at this month’s G7 summit in Canada. But Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s prime minister, did not oppose the White House as ardently as France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Angela Merkel or Canada’s Justin Trudeau on the issue.