EU-ASEAN free trade pact still way off, says Patten
EU-ASEAN free trade pact still way off, says Patten
Martin Abbugao, Agence France-Presse, Singapore
European Commissioner Chris Patten said Friday that he
discussed the idea of an ASEAN-EU free trade agreement (FTA) with
Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, but no commitments were
made.
He said the European Union would like to focus more on making
a new round of global trade liberalization talks successful than
engaging in a series of bilateral agreements.
"We discussed it but there was no commitment on either side,"
Patten said in an interview with AFP after his meeting with Goh
here.
"We are absolutely, clearly focused in the EU on a successful
new WTO (World Trade Organization) round and we don't want to be
diverted from the success of that by a series of bilateral
agreements," said Patten, the EU's commissioner for external
relations.
A statement from Goh's office said the discussions with Patten
for an FTA between the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) was in "the context of what China and Japan had
separately initiated with ASEAN."
China and ASEAN last year agreed to study the setting up of an
FTA within a decade, while Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi has won support from key ASEAN leaders for his initiative
to form a new partnership with Southeast Asia.
Trade-dependent Singapore has signed FTAs with Japan and New
Zealand and is negotiating one with the United States. It also
plans similar accords with Australia, Canada and Mexico.
Patten said the EU has not completely turned its back on
bilateral accords, and was in the process of studying on whether
to negotiate such an FTA with Singapore.
But such an agreement must be compatible with WTO, and "even
more important it will have to go further than what the WTO is
likely to go," Patten stressed.
"We have to go very far on things like regulatory convergence
standards, on competition policy and so on," he said, adding that
the EU did not want "simply to have an agreement which is a
political statement."
To conclude an FTA with Singapore, which is already an open
economy, the EU has to be convinced "that it makes economic and
commercial sense".
"It may well be that when we on both sides looked at the
economic case, we'll conclude that there are alternatives to a
free trade agreement," he said, mentioning an agreement on
regulation or mutual recognition as possible alternatives.
All the standards for an FTA with Singapore will also be
applied on ASEAN, a grouping of 10 countries ranging from
centrally-planned economies like Myanmar and Vietnam and economic
backwaters Cambodia and Laos to the more advanced countries like
Singapore and Malaysia.
As such, the EU would like to help ASEAN become closely more
integrated by bridging their levels of economic development.
"We are looking at how we can use more the development
cooperation funds that we've committed to the region in the next
four years to support regional integration," Patten said.
The idea of a Singapore-EU FTA has been mooted before and some
European leaders see an FTA with the city-state as a starting
point for a similar trade pact with Southeast Asia.
Apart from meeting Goh, Patten also signed papers on the
opening of a European Commission delegation office here and
delivered a public lecture before leaving for London.