"CETA approved by Trade Committee MEPs", 8 Feb 2017

...[T]he European Parliament’s International Trade Committee has approved the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) at the end of January...The agreement will remove 98% of trade tariffs between Canada and the EU, aiming to bring an increase in trade worth USD 12 billion (GBP 9.8 billion) a year...CETA was surrounded by controversy mainly due to its eighth chapter, which used to provide an arbitration-based investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)...This resulted in mass protests, most notably in Germany, where in October the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe rejected a claim filed by rights groups [including Campact, Foodwatch and More Democracy], allowing the government to uphold the deal.  The EU and Canada agreed on an alternative to the ISDS: a permanent multilateral investment court system modelled on the World Trade Organisation’s Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), which will handle investment disputes under international law and will offer an appellate body...The full European Parliament and the Canadian parliament will vote on the deal later this month...