Strasbourg, 23/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission is pleased with the initial benefits obtained from the free trade agreement between the EU and South Korea land and therefore rejects the demand made by France to monitor South Korean vehicle imports.
France had been under pressure from its car manufacturers and subsequently requested close monitoring of South Korean car imports on the European market. France had suspected a sharp increase in these imports a year after the implementation of the EU/South Korea free trade agreement on 1 July 2011 but it did not manage to have the safeguard mechanism contained in the provisions of the agreement activated. In a press release published on 22 October, Commissioner Karel De Gucht explained that, “we have carried out an investigation and concluded that this request made no sense”. He added that not only had the legal conditions not been met but that the preliminary figures demonstrate that the free trade agreement has largely benefited the EU, whose bilateral trade deficit had fallen to its lowest levels ever.
In the perspective of the next round of free trade negotiations with Japan, the French government is disappointed by the Commission decision on the South Korean dossier and promised that it would ensure that the interests of French industry were protected. De Gucht, however, repeated that talks would be halted if there is not enough progress on opening up the Japanese market within a deadline of 12 months. The Commissioner for trade also expects that if negotiations are launched with the US, they will be difficult, because he thinks that this could create some problems with France and its agricultural interests.
Protectionism. De Gucht and the head of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, have criticised Arnaud Montebourg, the French minister for industry. The latter has repeatedly railed against trade imbalances and globalisation, and he dismissed De Gucht's criticism as well as Lamy's, to whom he has retorted in the same vein. On Monday, the Commissioner for trade stated that, “Mr Montebourg is against globalisation and is protectionist, and that's his choice. The reasons he gives, however, don't make sense. France can't redistribute the global trade cards alone”. Last weekend, Lamy, a former Commissioner for trade, himself, expressed his fears about the “patriotic protectionism” of Montebourg, who posed for a Parisian magazine on 21 October with clothes -a sailor's smock - and other “made in France” products. The French minister retorted that Lamy should attempt to rebalance the existing imbalances between industrial countries and defend French and European industry. Montebourg added that the global balance of trade proposed by the WTO was a disaster. He was particularly critical of unfair trade practices by China, which he believed had joined the WTO without there being any reciprocal arrangements. (EH/trans/fl)