Free-trade deal with EU could be in home stretch

With Prime Minister Stephen Harper and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso now handling negotiations directly, there is increasing confidence within the Conservative government that a trade agreement between Canada and the European Union will be in place before the end of the year.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, if ratified, would be the most important advance in Canadian trade in a generation. It could also help revive the fortunes of a government that has seen little in the way of good news for many months.

When Mr. Harper and Mr. Barroso met earlier this month on the sidelines of the G20 in St. Petersburg, they resolved to negotiate "at the highest level," according to a senior government official speaking on background. Their respective staffs are now at work attempting to bridge the remaining gaps impeding an agreement…

Disagreements over meat and dairy exports, government procurement contracts, financial services and patent protection on pharmaceuticals have stymied the deal.

With the Europeans launching free-trade talks with the United States, there was growing fear that the Conservative government had let the opportunity of a Canada-EU accord slip away…

But the Canada-EU talks were not at a complete impasse. European leaders were presented with a set of proposals in July that negotiators from both sides had worked on and that were meant to bridge the remaining differences…

There is some talk in Ottawa that a framework agreement could be the centrepiece of the Throne Speech that will launch a new session of Parliament on Oct. 16. But since any proposed framework agreement would still have to be sent to the provinces for signoff, a more realistic time frame is late October or November.

And it is still not certain that there will be a deal. The Conservatives played down a press report that the key stumbling block of setting a quota for Canadian beef exports has been overcome. A final deal on agriculture, the government official cautioned, is still not in place.

But the two sides are close enough that all remaining obstacles appear surmountable…

This has been excerpted from today’s article by the Globe and Mail, and is available in its entirety at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/globe-politics-insider/free... (subscription may be required)