Italy will not ratify the European Union’s free trade agreement with Canada, Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Friday, although Canadian officials played down the threat to the accord, which mostly took effect last year.

“Soon CETA (the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) will arrive in parliament and this majority will reject it and it will not ratify it,” Di Maio said at a farmers’ association gathering in Rome.

“If so much as one Italian official ... continues to defend treaties like CETA, they will be removed,” added Di Maio, who leads the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, which governs the country with the right-wing League.

The CETA accord has been provisionally in effect since September. It needs to be approved by all 28 EU member states to fully come into force, and can theoretically be scuppered altogether if an EU member country formally notifies Brussels that it has permanently rejected it...

This was excerpted from the 13 July 2018 edition of Reuters Canada.