Tausi Insider

Bundestag members cast their votes on the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, in Berlin, on Dec. 1. MICHELE TANTUSSI/Reuters German lawmakers on Thursday approved a free-trade deal between the European Union and Canada, moving the accord a step closer to taking full effect. The pact, formally known as the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA, was signed in late 2016. Most of its terms have been implemented provisionally since 2017, but the parliaments of the EU’s 27 member nations must ratify the deal for –it to come fully into force. Chancellor OIaf Scholz’s three-party coalition moved forward with ratifying it after Germany’s highest court in March rejected complaints against CETA, at least in the form in which it is currently in effect. Lawmakers voted 559-110 to approve the pact. Another 11 EU countries have yet to ratify the deal, Verena Hubertz, a lawmaker with Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats, told parliament’s lower house before the vote....

Heavy equipment prepares a road at Inmet’s massive Cobre Panama project. Panama has ordered First Quantum Minerals Ltd.’s FM-T Cobre Panama mine to cease commercial operations, after the Central American country clashed with the big Canadian copper miner over a profit-sharing agreement. Panama’s President Laurentino Cortizo made the announcement late Thursday in a dramatic televised address to the nation. Cobre Panama is First Quantum’s biggest mine, and accounts for more than half of its net asset value. Vancouver-based First Quantum is Canada’s biggest copper producer. First Quantum and Panama had been in talks for more than a year to try to hammer out a new profit-sharing agreement to replace the existing pact that sees the company pay a royalty based on a percentage of its revenue. First Quantum faced a deadline of midnight Wednesday to strike a new pact, but on Thursday morning the two sides announced they were at an impasse. Panama had wanted First Quantum to pay a minimum of U...