IN HAPPIER days for the European Union the arcana of international trade policy were a matter for harmless eccentrics, while the intricacies of Belgium’s constitutional arrangements were reserved strictly for masochists. Not in today’s Europe, where crises strike in the most unexpected places. Behold the fiasco of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada. Last-minute stonewalling by the Socialist-led parliament of Wallonia, the French-speaking bit of Belgium, meant that Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, had to hold off visiting Brussels for a summit on October 27th to sign the trade and investment deal which has been seven years in the making. As The Economist went to press the federal government had succeeded in winning the Walloons round. Thus did a regional parliament representing 3.6m people nearly thwart the will of governments representing 545m.

The debacle has many fathers. Wallonia’s Socialists, out of national office for the first time in decades, are troubled by fringe leftists and keen for attention. The Flemish, their richer (and more trade-friendly) partners in Belgium’s awkward federal construction, have long pushed for decentralisation that has now come back to bite them. The European Commission, which negotiates foreign trade on behalf of EU governments, should have foreseen that a “next-generation” deal such as CETA, replete with special courts for investors and complex provisions on the mutual recognition of standards, would attract next-generation opposition.

But the contingencies of CETA slot into a broader pattern. From regional parliaments to national referendums and restive constitutional courts, numerous spoilers have been hindering what should be routine European business. The EU is supposed to provide a forum in which governments can mediate their differences and forge compromises. But referendums are impervious to negotiation; regional parliaments are answerable only to their voters. Instead obscure politicians, like Paul Magnette, the indomitable minister-president of Wallonia, can extract concessions as ransom for their political hostage-taking, or simply hog the limelight. As regions or countries transfer their pathologies upwards to Europe, the EU risks sliding towards what Americans call a “vetocracy”.

What’s worse, trade is the one thing the EU is supposed to be able to do well. The Treaty of Rome, signed in 1957, granted Brussels the exclusive right to negotiate trade deals on behalf of governments. Since then the EU has concluded such accords with more than 50 countries; dozens more are in the pipeline. By the commission’s reckoning, one-seventh of the European workforce depends, directly or indirectly, on external trade (and all citizens benefit from cheaper goods). Last week Donald Tusk, who chairs summits of EU leaders, warned that failure on CETA would mean the EU could never strike a trade deal again. Not only would that choke off an important source of growth; it would make it difficult to see exactly what the point of European co-operation is.

The mess over CETA is in part collateral damage from the row over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a bigger and more vexatious EU-America agreement. Protesters transferred their outrage seamlessly from one to the other, dismissing cuddly Canada as a Trojan horse for rapacious American multinationals seeking to trample on European standards. The investment-protection provisions of the two deals (supposedly the main Walloon grievance) proved another source of trouble. Even after they were watered down, Europe’s governments forced the commission to declare CETA a “mixed” deal, meaning it required ratification by each national parliament (and, in Belgium’s case, five regional assemblies) rather than the European Parliament alone. If TTIP is ever signed—which now looks increasingly unlikely—it will surely face the same tortuous fate.

Deals that do not carry a transatlantic whiff may fare better. As Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission president, noted in frustration last week, the EU has recently concluded an agreement with Vietnam, a country not noted for its dedication to human rights, without a whisper of protest. Talks with Japan, too, are quietly approaching the finishing line.

Yet the EU’s credibility as a trade negotiator rests on its ability to speak for its members. Without that, the world’s largest consumer market starts to lose its allure. The agonising course of CETA will not quickly be forgotten by potential partners. If boning up on the niceties of Belgian regional politics, or the details of national referendum laws, becomes a prerequisite for negotiating with the EU, they will start to wonder if it is worth the bother.

Worthwhile Canadian initiative

More worrying is the damage to the EU’s self-esteem. The club is trying to get over its funk about Britain’s vote to leave by pushing something called the “Bratislava roadmap”, a policy blueprint of sorts for the months ahead. If its initiatives do not amount to much, it is at least an attempt to demonstrate that Brexit will not paralyse ordinary decision-making. Plainly, the Walloons did not get the memo. Striking a trade deal with a friendly partner like Canada should have been about as easy as it gets for the EU.

Few can take heart from this embarrassment. Eurosceptic governments that have sought to take back powers from Brussels, like Hungary and Poland, certainly did not have trade in mind. Trade-phobic leftists who cheered the plucky Walloons should remember that the next referendum or parliamentary vote might be turned against one of their own causes, such as generosity to refugees. In fact, the only politicians with cause for celebration are those who argue that the EU itself is past its sell-by date. True to form, Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front, denounced the “totalitarian” EU for attempting to squash Wallonian democracy. Though it has squeaked through, CETA will leave an unhappy legacy.