Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As is often the case with FTAs, small companies can benefit the most. Where there are trade barriers, expensive customs and tariffs have to be paid and there is significant bureaucracy. A big company with a big legal department can afford to have a customs official, lawyers and so on to overcome some of those trade barriers. That is very hard for a small company. When charges and barriers to trade are removed, often SMEs benefit most.

An entire chapter of CETA is dedicated to SMEs. It is about overcoming the constraints that might otherwise limit them taking full advantage of market access. There is a CETA SME website. Both the EU and Canada launched it in April 2019. That contains a user-friendly summary of CETA, explaining how it works in businessman terms. We think there are potential benefits in sectoral areas such as financial software, telecommunications, digital media content and gaming, education, e-learning, agritech, engineering, life sciences and digital health.