EU, ASEAN in Trade Talk

The EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are planning to explore the option of resuming their long-stalled region-to-region trade talks, officials from both sides confirmed late last month.

A meeting between senior officials from both blocs is now planned for the end of the year “to take stock and explore the way forward and report back to the ministers,” according to a joint media statement released following a meeting last week between ASEAN Economic Ministers and EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

In a speech in Washington earlier this week, the EU trade chief again referred to a possible agreement with ASEAN– along with examining whether to reboot talks with other individual members of the 10-country group – as one element of the Commission’s future trade strategy, which is due to be released this autumn.

The EU is one of ASEAN’s top trading partners, accounting for nearly 10 percent of ASEAN’s total trade and for 21.3 percent of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to the region. Total bilateral trade between ASEAN and the EU reached US$248.2 billion last year.

The move to reconsider the trade talks comes as ASEAN, a group that consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, is working to establish a formal economic community – involving, among other things, a single market – by the end of 2015.

Prolonged stall

Negotiations for a region-to-region deal began in 2007 but stalled in 2009, leading the EU to begin talks with some of ASEAN’s individual members in the interim. For instance, the EU inked a trade and investment deal with Singapore last year, and is currently in talks with Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The EU and Thailand held their fourth round last April, while the EU’s twelfth round of talks with Vietnam took place in March in Hanoi, with the next such meeting tentatively set for June in Brussels.