The “Stop CETA” movement in front of the European Parliament: the influence of civil society's framing strategies on parliamentary positions

Amid the climate crisis and rising inequalities, the benefits of trade liberalization are increasingly questioned. In response, EU trade policy has undergone significant evolutions, including the incorporation of Trade and Sustainable Development chapters and granting the European Parliament new prerogatives in an effort for democratization. Yet, recent agreements have been highly politicized. A notable case is the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, provisionally applied since 2017, where a coalition of civil society organizations (CSOs) played a central role acting as instigators and triggers of politicization. They formed a “pan-European” movement, highly coordinated thanks to the launch of several transnational networks such as “European Trade Justice”, enabling a range of actions, from submitting a European Citizens’ Initiative to organizing common days of protest in major cities, or running online campaigns with the publication of joint reports, statements, and open letters. The framing processes undertaken by CSOs as part of this external lobbying campaign were crucial in mobilizing public opinion on sensitive, yet technical issues related to free trade. They strategically used interpretative frames, for instance presenting the agreement as an open door to the importation of GMOs, or the investment-state dispute settlement mechanism (ISDS) as a threat to state sovereignty, to shape the perceptions of the public and thus influence EU policymakers. The European Parliament, as a directly elected institution, traditionally seen as a defender of diffuse interests, with veto power over trade agreements since the Lisbon Treaty, represented a key potential target. Taking the CETA as a case study, this paper examines the influence of civil society’s framing strategies on members of the European Parliament during CETA’s negotiations and ratification process (2009–2017). Drawing on the literature on collective action frames, it asks: what framing strategies did CSOs deploy in their opposition campaign? To what extent was the European parliament responsive to these frames? Through a qualitative textual analysis of CSOs’ joint declarations and parliamentary resolutions and questions tabled from 2009 to 2017, the study shows that the European Parliament is not impervious to external movements. While the initial motions for resolutions from the INTA Committee or the S&D group, for instance, welcomed an agreement with a major economic partner, many MEPs then began to echo the discursive frames put forward by civil society as the agreement got politicized, sometimes directly referring to their reports and unprecedented public mobilization. Results show that it was especially Euroskeptic groups in the EP that have appropriated the frames used by CSOs, placing particular emphasis on the threat to state sovereignty and positioning themselves as allies of a grassroots movement that denounces the Commission's abuse of power. The framing strategies used by civil society thus contributed to structuring the political conflict within the Parliament, which took a stand against ISDS, prompting the European Commission to amend the treaty in 2016, even though negotiations had already been concluded, and classify for the first time a trade agreement as “mixed,” requesting its ratification by member states at the national level.