French Senate rejects EU-Canada free trade deal.

commercial part of the agreement has already been in force since 2017, the EU needs the approval of all 27 member states for the CETA to be fully ratified. So far, 17 EU countries have given their green light, including Germany. France and Cyprus have rejected ratification.

France’s Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly voted against a free-trade agreement between the EU and Canada thanks to an unusual alliance in the upper house between left and right-wing opponents of French President Emmanuel Macron.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement(CETA) has been in force provisionally since 2017 but requires ratification in all European Union member countries to take full effect.

Macron and his centrist parliamentary allies managed to get the deal approved in the National Assembly lower house in 2019 by a slim margin, but backing by the Senate upper house – where they are in a clear minority – is needed for ratification.

After scenes of tension rarely seen in the upper house, senators voted 211 against and 44 for the treaty and then confirmed the rejection with a second vote.

There had been some expectations that opponents of the treaty would run out of time for the confirmation vote but they managed to squeeze it in by racing through the debate.

Although a setback for the government, which backs the treaty, the no-vote does not in itself nullify the agreement.

Under EU rules, the rejection is only effective if the government officially notifies the EU, which Macron is not expected to do.

The government has not said how it will handle the situation, but one option is to take the treaty back to the National Assembly for a fresh debate and vote.

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The rest is now in the hands of the National Assembly, which has the final say. If the government does not propose a new vote – which is highly likely – a political group can propose a new debate and vote at the National Assembly, and the risk is that the chamber would vote it down.

Manon Aubry, head of the far-left France Insoumise list for the European elections and an opponent of the agreement, was also delighted. “Now we have to go all the way and suspend the treaty”, she posted on X, announcing that she would be calling for a debate on CETA at the next plenary session of the European Parliament.

The result is a setback for Macron’s presidential majority only three months before the European elections.

France is the second country to have rejected ratification. The first, Cyprus, has not notified the EU Commission of its no-vote and continues to apply the treaty pending a new vote.

“When the CETA was signed, it was specified that in the event of a Member State notifying the Commission of its rejection, the Commission would have to terminate the provisional application of the agreement and ask the Parliament and the Council to vote again,” explained Mathilde Dupré, an economist et co-director of Institut Veblen.