As part of her visit to South-East Asia, European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström will stop in Manila on Thursday 9 March, where she will take part in a meeting the following day with the economic and/or trade ministers of the 10 countries in the ASEAN area – the objective being to discuss how to relaunch the plan for an EU-ASEAN bloc to bloc free trade agreement.
Launched in 2007, the negotiations for a regional trade agreement between the EU and the ASEAN (Brunei, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) proved difficult because of the disparity of the Asian bloc (Burma, Cambodia and Laos are less developed countries, while the others are middle-income) and the negotiations were broken off by the Asian side in 2009 due to disagreements on Burma's participation (due to its human rights situation at that time).
With these talks on ice, the EU then engaged in negotiations for individual free trade agreements with several countries in the area. It thus concluded agreements with Singapore in 2012 and Vietnam in 2015, and negotiations have been underway with Burma since 2015 for an agreement on investment protection. Free trade negotiations were also launched with Malaysia in 2010 and with Thailand in 2013, but both are now on hold (since 2013 and 2014 respectively). In addition, free trade negotiations were also launched in 2016 with Indonesia and the Philippines.
"We want to build a region-to-region agreement starting with individual free trade agreements. The starting point can be a common set of rules and separate schedules for market access commitments. This is what Cecilia Malmström will say at the meeting on 10 March", an official from the Commission's DG Trade told the European Parliament on 28 February.
The ASEAN is the EU's third biggest trading partner after the USA and China, with a bilateral trade volume in goods and services of over $280 billion. The EU is also the top investor in the region, representing 22% of the area's foreign direct investments. These stood at an average of €19 billion per year between 2012 and 2014. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)