The European Union and Canada have been formalizing the final clauses of the agreement on free trade. It is planned the bilateral agreement between Canada and the EU member states to be signed soon. The negotiations started in 2009; the issue of creation of such territories is rather complicated. Now the final stage of the project is ongoing. On October 18, a meeting between Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso took place. It was planned the sides had to eliminate the discrepancies, hampering the ratification of the document. As a result of agreement, duties on import and export of services and goods between the participants will be eliminated. Annual turnover of Canada and the EU totals 84 billion euros and it is constantly rising. Moreover, the document will have direct impact on talks about Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which is designed to stimulate the growth of turnover between the EU and the US. According to data, in 2012, the US export to the EU reached record 206 billion euro. The EU member states exported to the US goods equaling 300 billion euros. More than 10% of economically active population in the EU depend on foreign trade that is more than 30 million working places. Experts consider that negotiations of agreement on free trade between Canada and the EU will be a run-through before the TTIP. It is planned to test the process of complex topics coordination, which the United States and the European Union may face during the global agreement. At the moment there are unresolved issues pertaining to Europe’s official refusal of genetically modified food use, as well as the demands of the Canadian farmers to expand the access to the European meat markets.
