Brussels, 12/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was on a visit to Indonesia on 11 July, said that the EU should “hurry up and put a free-trade deal in place with the ASEAN region to maintain competitiveness”. Region-to-region negotiations, which were launched in 2007 between the EU and the ten South-East Asian economies - Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma/Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - were put on hold in 2009 because of the political situation in Burma/Myanmar and the diverse nature of the South-East Asian bloc, where less developed economies, such as Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, sit alongside major emerging economies. Since 2009, the EU has opened free-trade talks with a number of the ASEAN countries - Singapore, Malaysia and most recently Vietnam. The burgeoning political opening in Burma/Myanmar since 2011, however, could allow region-to-region negotiations to resume. After ASEAN economy ministers made this case to EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht in Phnom Penh at the end of March (see EUROPE 10588), the commissioner himself gave assurances in mid-June that the EU was keen to deepen bloc-to-bloc economic relations (see EUROPE 10637).
Trade between the EU and ASEAN was worth €206 billion in 2010, making the region the EU's fifth largest trading partner. The EU is ASEAN's third largest trading partner, after China and Japan, accounting for 10.7 of its trade. However, the EU is by far the largest investor in the region, with 20.6% of direct foreign investment (DFI) between 2008 and 2010. (EH/transl.rt)