At the end of the informal meeting of EU trade ministers in Sofia on Tuesday 27 February, European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström said the European Commission is due to present the text of the EU-Singapore free trade agreement "in the spring", ahead of it being signed and ratified.
"Our agreement with Singapore was subject to changes of architecture to include our new approach for dispute settlement on investment (the investment court system –ICS) that we included in our agreements with Canada and Vietnam, and that will be included in our agreement with Mexico", Malmström said.
"It took some extra time. The agreement is now being translated and we hope that in the spring we will be able to take a decision at the Commission and send our proposal with a view to its signature by the Council and its approval at the European Parliament. We are very close to the end of this quite long saga", she added.
The first free trade agreement negotiated and finalised by the EU since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU-Singapore free trade agreement, concluded in December 2012 and finalised in October 2014, was the subject of an opinion from the European Court of Justice on the allocation of competences between the EU and its member states for its conclusion and ratification (see EUROPE 11789). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)