GETTY A trade deal between the EU and Canada is in peril

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Centre-left Die Linke has launched legal action to block the controversial Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) pact, saying it is unconstitutional under German law. The party’s attempt to torpedo the hated deal is just the latest in a series of devastating trade blows for the EU, which is unravelling following the Brexit vote.

And it reveals once more the cavernous differences opening up between different member states which have effectively rendered the European project unworkable. Earlier this month Canada’s despairing Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland asked: “If the EU cannot do a deal with Canada, I think it is legitimate to say who the heck can it do a deal with?”

GETTY The controversial trade deal is being legally challenged in Germany

GETTY Left Party MP Klaus Ernst says CETA is incompatible with the German constitution

But now there is a very real prospect that CETA will be torpedoed before it has even left port in a development which will throw the future of a much bigger deal with America into serious doubt. Negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have ground to a halt, with impatient American officials warning Brussels to stop dragging their heels. The US chief negotiator said the proposed deal was nowhere near as enticing to Washington now that Britain has left the bloc, comparing a Europe without the UK to an America without California. Britain will not be affected by either calamity after voting to leave the EU, and is now free to begin informal talks on sealing its own trade deals with Canada, the US and the rest of the world.

Theresa May has set up an independent trade department, headed by Dr Liam Fox, which has already been inundated requests for free trade agreements from the biggest economies across the globe. Announcing its legal action today Die Linke said CETA, which has involved seven years of negotiations to date, is unconstitutional because it “breaches democratic, constitutional state and social state principles” in Germany. Its deputy leader in the Bundestag, Klaus Ernst, said: “Since the government obviously feels more strongly bound to the interests of internationally acting corporations than to the interests of the citizens, we see ourselves forced to take legal action. “I very much hope that CETA will now fail. We can't afford more cutbacks to our democracy."

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