Brussels, 17/12/2007 (Agence Europe) - In a memorandum (of which EUROPE has obtained a copy) issued on 13 December for member states trade experts on the 133 Committee, the European Commission takes stock of the negotiations over a free trade agreement (FTA) between the EU and the countries in ASEAN (the Association of South-East Asian Nations, namely Brunei, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), six months into the talks. Despite disagreements over the format of the talks and the structure of the future agreement, particularly due to the controversial question of Burma-Myanmar, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and the trade ministers from the ASEAN countries agreed, in Brunei on 3 May 2007, to a compromise so that the talks could be launched. A joint negotiating committee was established in May. It met in July and October but was not able to make any progress. It will be meeting again in January 2008.
During informal talks on the fringes of the 21 November 2007 summit in Singapore to commemorate the 30th anniversary of EU-ASEAN relations, Vietnam's deputy prime minister, Hoàng Trung Hai, who is acting as the facilitator for ASEAN, confirmed that there were disagreements among ASEAN countries over the scope of the deal. He said the areas of public tender and competition (the Singapore Questions), intellectual property and sustainable development were 'particularly difficult' for ASEAN, as was the timetable. ASEAN feels it is 'no longer feasible' to negotiate over a two year time period as set out in the Vision Group's report. Reaffirming the EU's desire to reach a balanced, ambitious FTA, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said that this level of ambition was 'not entirely, or no longer, shared by ASEAN,' and the slow progress and level of achievements to date bore witness to the bilateral disagreements. The commissioner therefore suggested continuing 'the region-to-region approach while at the same time starting already at this stage to explain bilaterally the contents of the bilateral parts of our agreement and the level of ambition of the individual countries.' Such a variable geometry approach would, while not losing sight of the overarching FTA, allow the EU to gain better understanding of the different situations in each of the ASEAN states in order to be in a better position to identify areas where further progress can be more rapidly achieved. Only Burma-Myanmar opposed this suggestion.
The region-to-region approach will continue along the lines set out by the joint committee, taking the form of four 'exchanges of views rounds' in 2008 where the EU will make its case on dossiers considered to be problematic by ASEAN like the issue of rules. In Singapore, the ASEAN ministers suggested that EU should come up with a 'template-matrix' of what it would like the FTA to cover, which would help the Asian countries clarify their positions on the different issues. Once the EU's level of ambition has been made clear for each area, it will be more productive for EU negotiators to assess where each of the ASEAN states is situated. Following the meeting of the joint committee in January, the European Commission will sound out each ASEAN state bilaterally to assess their desire to define bilateral commitments (E.H.)