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Business Matters: Stalled Trade Deal between EU and Canada

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Stalled Trade Deal between EU and Canada

25/10/2016 GMT

BBC World Service - Business Matters, Stalled Trade Deal between EU and Canada

How a small country's small region delayed a deal for the world's largest trading bloc

A ceremony to sign a landmark trade deal between Canada and the European Union is planned for Thursday. The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau - no less - will be there, pen in hand. But there's a hitch. A pretty big one. The EU cannot sign it. The French speaking part of Belgium - Wallonia, population 3.5 million-- won't allow the national government to approve the deal.

The online attack that brought down websites such as Twitter and Spotify last week is being blamed on devices like home webcams. It seems wireless devices were hijacked and then used to knock popular websites offline. Some of the gadgets in question were made by the Chinese electronics firm Hangzhou Xiongmai. They're now being recalled in the US.

The former Socialist countries of central Europe once attracted western investors with a highly qualified, low-paid workforce. But not any more. From Hungary alone, more than half a million people have gone west in recent years, in search of better pay. The shortage of skilled workers in the country is pushing up wages...and that, not surprisingly, is discouraging new investors, as Nick Thorpe reports from Budapest.

And we've passed a climate change milestone. The United Nations' authority on weather, the World Meteorological Organisation, says carbon dioxide in earth's atmosphere has reached a new record -- 400 parts per million. That's up almost a third on pre-industrial times. The WMO says global levels of the gas are unlikely to drop for many generations.

Rob Young is joined by Vandana Hari, an energy markets analyst, in Singapore, and Shikha Dalmia, a columnist and analyst, in Detroit in the US.

(Photo: A protester holds a sign against international trade agreements in Brussels, 2016. Credit: Viriginia Mayo/AP)

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