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Meet Monsieur Magnette: The man who made Canada weep
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Candidate
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| Contributor | IndyGeorgia |
| Last Edited | IndyGeorgia Oct 21, 2016 03:46pm |
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| Category | Profile |
| Author | Laurens Cerulus |
| News Date | Friday, October 21, 2016 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Wallonia’s Minister-President Paul Magnette has hauled Belgium’s Francophone Socialist Party out of a political ditch and into the global spotlight.
His underdog campaign against the tides of globalization, epitomized by the EU’s trade agreement with Canada, could hardly have come at a better time for a party under threat from the far left.
Magnette persistently denied that he wanted to tank the trade deal, but that’s what Wallonia’s veto effectively achieved Friday, when Canadian Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland fought back her tears to call time on Ottawa’s seven-year battle to conclude a trade deal with Europe.
Magnette was in need of a popular cause to rally his troops, all too aware that Belgium’s Marxist PTB party was making deep inroads into his core constituency because of Wallonia’s mounting economic woes. Last month, the U.S. construction equipment maker Caterpillar compounded the French-speaking region’s problems by announcing that it was closing its branch in Gosselies, near Charleroi. The closure will cost Wallonia and Belgium 2,200 jobs directly, and several thousands of jobs at affiliated companies.
Magnette’s defiant obstinance over the Comprehensive Trade and Economic Agreement between the Commission and Ottawa has allowed him to rebuild his political stock as an international Socialist figurehead and punch back at the rise of the far-left. |
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