Whatever your opinion on the Mercosur trade deal might be – and I recognise that my readers are likely divided – nobody should be cheering the precedent set in Strasbourg yesterday whereby the European Parliament decided that, instead of making a decision, it would simply cop out of doing so.
The decision – by ten votes – to refer the trade deal to the European Court of Justice creates a horrible precedent, for anybody who is interested in serious and effective governance. Note well how joyfully the news was reported by some, who noted that the deal had been “delayed for two years”. Not approved, not rejected – delayed. It is, for the record, vanishingly unlikely that the EU courts will actually reject the deal, given the years that lawyers have spent poring over every word in it. But it is a rock solid certainty that many lawyers will make vast sums of money arguing over the process for two years, while Europe’s trade strategy hangs in stasis.
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