The green light given by the EU Council on Friday 8 November will finally allow the first Free Trade Agreement with a South East Asian state to be implemented.
Starting Thursday 21 November, the EU will have 73 trade agreement partners around the world with Singapore. The city-State is also its main economic partner in the dynamic ASEAN region.
Policy makers and the private sector welcomed this perspective.
More than 50,000 European companies export to Singapore, a large majority of them small and medium-sized enterprises, Ville Skinnari, Finnish Minister for Trade, recalled on this occasion.
For the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, this treaty “crowns the efforts of this Commission to build a network of partners committed to open, fair and rules-based trade”.
“This brings the total to 42 trade agreements with 73 partners, accounting for a third of total EU trade. This is the largest such network in the world”, said Cecilia Malmström, Commissioner for Trade.
This announcement was made with great fanfare in Singapore on the same day, in the presence of Phil Hogan, Commissioner-designate for Trade. On this occasion, Commissioner Hogan met with several members of the Singaporean government, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)