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THERE’S NO CHOICE, BUT TO LIBERALISE

An EU Perspective:

An interview with Mr. Philippe Meyer, Head of Unit for Trade Relations with South Asia, Korea and Asean, and Director General for Trade, EUROPEAN COMMISSION, Brussels

Q. What has been the progress of FTA talks between the EU and Asean after the two sides met for the sixth time in Vietnam?

A. Progress has been slower than expected and as foreseen in the preparatory work done by the "Vision Group" set up jointly by the EU and the ASEAN in 2005 to look into the feasibility of a Free Trade Area.  According to it, negotiations were to be concluded within 2 years.

This timeframe was ambitious but not unreasonable, and the EU has demonstrated, in its EU-Korea FTA negotiations, that it was technically possible to do it within 2 years: these negotiations have come very close to being concluded in far less than 2 years, and only very few "political" issues have been left open for a possible final deal soon.

On the ASEAN side however, it appeared clearly from the beginning of the talks, that their organisation could not stand so many FTA negotiations at the same time, and that their priority was to achieve other negotiations first.

On the substance, one should say that the many discussions between experts have clarified a number of issues, on services, SPS, TBT, Custom and Trade facilitation, sustainable development, competition, intellectual property rights, etc, but it is true as well that the ASEAN has been careful not to be seen as being already on a negotiating mode.

Q. Why is the EU turning to holding ‘separate talks’ with individual members of Asean. Could that facilitate the deal with the group?

A. The enormous challenge of this negotiation is for the EU to negotiate with a region which is not integrated as a custom union, has no harmonised legislation, and no mechanism to be represented.

As the region is not a custom union, tariff and services and establishment/investment liberalisation will be different for all partners and need to be negotiated individually. As there is no harmonised legislation, most provisions will also be country-specific, and negotiated individually.

And as there is no ASEAN representation mechanism, the problem is that we can only meet with the region when the 10 chief negotiators plus the ASEAN Secretariat and the Vietnamese Facilitator are available.

As a consequence, limiting our contacts to the formal "Joint Committee Meetings" is the recipe for either endless negotiations or a very shallow FTA, two outcomes that the EU is determined to avoid. 

Negotiating with individual countries can inject the necessary momentum in the regional negotiation, and offer the margin of manoeuvre that some need to go beyond the "lowest common denominator" of the entire region.

Doing it on certain subjects with a few countries together allows for economies of scale and confirms the regional objective of the EU. It shows the support we want to give to the ASEAN construction without letting those who have the resources and political will to engage be held hostage of those who don't.

In brief, we are not trying to "divide and rule" the ASEAN. Far from this. We are trying to "explore and stimulate": "explore" the individual countries' margin for manoeuvre, priorities, needs and constraints and "stimulate" the overall EU-ASEAN process by possibly feeding the results of the bilateral discussions into the regional process, which remains our ultimate objective.

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