France's Trade Minister Franck Reister has been busy. He has made appearances on television, radio, and in the press to convince French senators to ratify the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). Five years after a tense vote in the Assemblée Nationale, the free trade agreement between the European Union and Canada is finally being put to the vote in the upper house of Parliament on Thursday, March 21. The treaty, which partly came into force in 2017, eliminates virtually all customs duties between the EU and Canada.

Off the back of farmers' protests and just two and a half months ahead of the European Parliament elections, the bill has returned to the French parliamentary arena thanks to the Communist group in the Sénat, which is using its day of legislative day of initiative to hold a vote on the agreement. The chamber had previously unsuccessfully asked the government for a vote to ratify it. "It's essential that free-trade treaties be debated by parliamentarians," said Cécile Cukierman, president of the Communist group in the Sénat. "But since then we've also seen the emergence of a profound agricultural crisis in our country, to which we need to be able to respond."

Senators from the right and the left created an alliance of circumstance, eager to make themselves the voice of agricultural anger against the centrists and President Emmanuel Macron's supporters.

The leader of Les Républcains (LR, right-wing) senators, Bruno Retailleau, said he is "in favor of free trade," but is opposed to the ratification of CETA and wishes to "send a double message to the government, which has scorned the Sénat, and to the [European] Commission, to show that our agriculture cannot be a variable at a time when it is negotiating [a free trade agreement with] Mercosur behind our backs." Didier Marie, a Socialist senator, said that "this agreement is an old-world agreement," pointing, like others, to the failure to comply with European environmental and health standards.

The non-ratification of CETA is not unanimously supported by the Sénat's right-wing and centrist majority. On Thursday, the centrist group will defend a motion to refer the bill back to the committee to adjourn discussions on the agreement. "It's not appropriate to debate CETA now. We need to take it seriously and avoid giving an argument to all those who are against Europe," said the centrist group's president Hervé Marseille. He is also leader of the UDI party, which recently joined Macron's coalition for the European elections.

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