MEP almost refused entry after opposing EU-Canada trade deal

European Parliament member and environmental activist Jose Bove was told to leave the Canada, according to organizers of an event to which Bove had been invited as guest speaker.

The Council of Canadians, a social justice non-profit, said on Wednesday however that a decision to expel Bove from Canada had been reversed.

Ralph Goodale, Minister of Public Safety, tweeted that “an appropriate outcome has been achieved” in Bove’s case, and the activist will be allowed to stay in the country after being told earlier to get out.

Goodale said privacy rules will block public comments by Bove however.

The Council of Canadians said the French activist had been held by customs for several hours on Tuesday, which resulted in him missing a planned appearance at a public forum in Montreal on the Canadian-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

Bove confirmed that he had been blocked at Montreal airport for three hours in a tweet and blamed it on his opposition to CETA.

The Canada Border Services declined to comment on the case.

Bove is the keynote speaker at another conference in St. John’s, Newfoundland on Friday and he will speak at the conference as originally planned, the Council of Canadians said in a statement.

Bove served as a member of the European Greens between 2009 and 2014. He participated in the vandalism of a French McDonald’s restaurant in 1999 in Millau. In January 1988 he and his comrades destroyed genetically modified maize in a grain silo in Nérac in the department of Lot-et-Garonne.