The first round of negotiations for an EU-Indonesia free-trade agreement, which was held in Brussels on 20 and 21 September, saw the foundations laid for a comprehensive full round of discussions in Indonesia early next year, the Commission reported on Thursday 22 September.
The discussions focused on a wide range of matters covered by the future agreement, such as tariffs, rules of origin, services and investment, public procurement, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary issues, intellectual property rights, issues related to sustainable development and trade disputes.
The parties reiterated their ambition of concluding an ambitious agreement to deepen bilateral relations in trade and investment, the Commission added.
The EU and Indonesia officially launched their free-trade negotiations on 18 July this year (see EUROPE 11596).
The aim is to boost bilateral trade, which passed the €25 billion mark in 2015 for goods (including €10 billion in exports and with a deficit of €5 billion from the EU) and which stood at €6 billion in 2014 for services (with a surplus of €2.2 billion for the EU).
Moreover, the EU has a foreign direct investment stock of nearly €26 billion in Indonesia, making it the second-largest investor in the country after Singapore.
Indonesia is the EU's fifth-largest trading partner in Southeast Asia, but only its 30th partner at global level. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)