(Bloomberg)—Germany’s top court provisionally cleared a controversial trade agreement the European Union is scheduled to complete with Canada later this month while litigation is pending against the accord. The German government can agree to the deal at an EU ministerial meeting next week as long as it guarantees that any implementation of the agreement can be revoked in case of an adverse final ruling in the cases. The order, issued by the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe on Thursday, also requires that the planned provisional implementation of the pact is limited to some core areas where the EU has sole jurisdiction and that a committee set up under the treaty is subject to some democratic control. The EU and Canada have been negotiating the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA, since 2009. Like its counterpart TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, being thrashed out between the U.S. and the EU, CETA has come under public criticism on both sides of the Atlantic. Opponents argue the accords will cost thousands of jobs, promote industrial agriculture and lower standards. Activist groups, national opposition lawmakers and a member of the European parliament have sued over the pact and asked the judges to make the German government veto the plan. The German suits say CETA would undermine the principle of democracy because the EU transgressed its powers by negotiating it and bypasses parliament by entrusting some rulemaking to a committee set up under the treaty. They also complained the EU plans to allow provisional implementation of the rules even before national parliaments have ratified them. EU ministers are scheduled to clear CETA in a vote on Oct. 18 and the pact is due to be signed at a EU-Canada summit on Oct. 27. The pact would cut trade barriers between the EU’s market of more than 500 million people and Canada, the world’s 10th-biggest economy last year. The cases are: BVerfG, 2 BvR 1368/16, 2 BvR 1444/16, 2 BvR 1482/16, 2 BvR 1823/16 and 2 BvE 3/16. To contact the reporter on this story: Karin Matussek in Berlin at [email protected]. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at [email protected], Peter Chapman, Richard Bravo ©2016 Bloomberg L.P.