Answer given by Ms Malmström on behalf of the Commission
26.10.2015
European Commission President Barroso and Canadian Prime Minister Harper announced the end of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) negotiations at the EU-Canada Summit on 26 September 2014. Since negotiations with Canada were concluded and the agreement was made public on the Commission's website on the same day, lawyers of the European Commission and of Canada have been undertaking the legal review (‘legal scrubbing’) of the CETA text[1]. This is a rigorous and important process meant to ensure that the agreement is legally sound and that the various chapters of the agreement are consistent with one another. The chapters for which the legal scrubbing has been completed are then sent for translation into the official languages of the EU. Once the legal scrubbing and the translations are ready and the agreement has been adopted by the Commission, the Commission can formally submit CETA to the Council for its signature. At this moment, all the language versions[2] of the agreement will be made available on the Registry of Commission documents[3].