During the 16th session of ministerial consultations on trade, which took place in Singapore on Friday 2 March, the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN – Brunei, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) agreed to continue their work towards establishing a framework governing the parameters of a bi-regional free trade agreement.
European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström and her Asian counterparts asked their senior officials "to continue efforts in developing the framework, including through continued domestic consultations and engagements in experts’ dialogues", according to their joint statement.
Since 2013, the EU and ASEAN have been examining the possibility of resuming their negotiations for a bloc-to-bloc free trade agreement. The talks, which were launched in 2007 but interrupted in 2009, are based on the EU-Singapore and EU-Vietnam free trade agreements (see EUROPE 10803 and 11743).
"The EU-ASEAN working group is looking at a region-to-region free trade agreement. There was not yet a lot of progress and more work lies ahead if we want to lay solid foundations for a resumption of the actual negotiations between our regions (...) It will take time", Malmström commented.
The EU was ASEAN's second biggest trading partner in 2016. Bilateral trade stood at €226.8 billion in 2017, up by 9.1% compared with 2015. The EU has also kept its place as the top foreign investor in Southeast Asia, with €26.3 billion in FDI in 2016.
On Friday, the EU and ASEAN also reaffirmed their "commitment to uphold free and open trade, and support for a rules-based, transparent, and non-discriminatory multilateral trading system". (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)