[2][13] After a challenge by Belgium, the European Court of Justice upheld the agreement on 30 April 2019, in its opinion 1/17, that the dispute resolution mechanism complies with EU law.

The European Commission claims CETA will create a more level playing field between Canada and the EU on intellectual property rights.

[16][17] Opponents consider that CETA would weaken European consumer rights, including high EU standards concerning food safety,[18] and criticize it as a boon only for big business and multinational corporations, while risking net-losses, unemployment, and environmental damage impacting individual citizens.

The TIEA was intended to move beyond traditional market access issues, to include areas such as trade and investment facilitation, competition, mutual recognition of professional qualifications, financial services, e-commerce, temporary entry, small- and medium-sized enterprises, sustainable development, and sharing science and technology.

An agreement in principle was signed by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso on 18 October 2013.

[27] The trade agreement was officially presented on 25 September 2014 by Harper and Barroso during an EU – Canada Summit at the Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto.

After it had been leaked by German public television on 14 August, the 1634 pages long Consolidated CETA text was published on the EU's official website on 26 September 2014.

At the sectoral level, the study predicts the greatest gains in output and trade to be stimulated by services liberalization and by the removal of tariffs applied on sensitive agricultural products; it also suggests CETA could have a positive social impact if it includes provisions on the ILO's Core Labour Standards and Decent Work Agenda.

The study details a variety of impacts in various "cross-cutting" components of CETA: it advocates against controversial NAFTA-style ISDS provisions; predicts potentially imbalanced benefits from a government procurement (GP) chapter; assumes CETA will lead to an upward harmonization in IPR regulations, particularly changing Canadian IPR laws; and predicts impacts in terms of competition policy and several other areas.

Comprising 28 Member States with a total population of over 500 million and a GDP of €13.0 trillion in 2012,[35] the European Union (EU) is the world's second largest single market, foreign investor and trader.

Part of the Agreement is stricter enforcement of intellectual property, including liability for Internet Service Providers, a ban on technologies that can be used to circumvent copyright.

Canadian stakeholders have criticized the EU's delays in the approval process for genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and GMO traceability and labelling requirements, none of which are addressed in CETA.

[44] Both the EU and Canada will retain the right to regulate freely in areas of public interest such as environmental protection, or people's health and safety.

Such investors complaints are nothing new under public international law (UNCTAD listed 514 such cases at the end of 2012, most from the United States, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Germany) but for transatlantic trade and investment, this comprehensive level of parallel justice is new.

Only after time limits set for these review mechanisms have lapsed, is the tribunal's final award to "be binding between the disputing parties and in respect of that particular case".

(article X.39: Enforcement of awards, p. 177) On 26 March 2014, German Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel wrote an open letter to EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, stating that investment protection was central sensitive point, which could in the end decide whether a transatlantic free trade agreement would meet with German approval.

[60] Shortly before the scheduled signature of CETA on 27 October 2016, Belgium announced it was unable to sign the treaty, as assent was required by all regional governments.

On 28 October, the Belgian regional parliaments allowed Full Powers to be given to the federal government, and the following day Minister of Foreign Affairs Didier Reynders gave his signature on behalf of Belgium.

As of August 2023, eighteen states have deposited their instruments of ratification: Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

[91] In June 2022, Germany's governing coalition agreed to ratify the agreement after the noted provisions on arbitral tribunals are renegotiated and adjusted to address the concerns of the Federal Constitutional Court.

[81] In September 2017, Belgium requested the opinion of the European Court of Justice on whether the dispute resolution system of CETA is compatible with EU law.

[93] On 30 April 2019, the European Court of Justice gave its opinion that the system for the resolution of disputes between investors and states in CETA is compatible with EU law.

[96] In November 2022, the Supreme Court upheld the challenge, finding by a 4-3 majority that ratification of CETA would be unconstitutional as Irish law currently stands.