The EU was scheduled to sign a long-delayed trade pact with Canada today after a hold-out Belgian region finally endorsed the agreement.
Ambassadors from the EU nations meeting in Brussels late on Friday paved the way for the signature of the deal and for it to be provisionally applied until all 28 member states have legally ratified it.
European Council President Donald Tusk said on Twitter that an EU-Canada summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was scheduled to be held today to sign the accord.
“I am delighted to confirm that the EU is ready to sign the comprehensive economic and trade agreement with Canada. It represents a milestone in the EU’s trade policy and our commitment to it,” said Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose country now holds the bloc’s rotating presidency.
The move came after parliamentarians in Belgium’s French-speaking region of Wallonia voted by 58 votes to five, with no abstentions, to support the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement.
Walloon Parliament President Andre Antoine said that “Europe must also pass by Wallonia.”
Smaller than the US state of New Jersey, Wallonia blocked the deal between more than 500 million EU citizens and 35 million Canadians for several weeks, deeply embarrassing the bloc.
The EU needed unanimity among all its 28 members and Belgium needed the backing of all its regions to approve the pact.
Trudeau had been due to sign the accord with EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday, but was forced to cancel his flight.
Work on the agreement was launched in 2009 and the text was actually finalized two years ago but sat in limbo awaiting endorsement.
Antoine thanked the lawmakers for working in “real democratic transparency.”
“This closes two years of work,” he said after voting finished.
Walloon politicians had argued that the deal would undermine labor, environment and consumer standards and allow multinationals to crush local companies.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy