Pascal Lamy forges ties between Europe, Asia

David Kennedy, Contributor/Jakarta

Although Pascal Lamy's term of office as European Union (EU) trade negotiator is drawing to a close he shows little sign of slowing down.

The 57-year-old Frenchman, a keen marathon runner, spoke to The Jakarta Post on the margins of a meeting of economic ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) after which he was returning to EU headquarters in Brussels, via Singapore, Fiji and Brazil. He claimed he actually ran more than he flew but his jet lagged assistants begged to differ.

Since 1999 the tireless negotiator, who speaks with a slight French accent, on behalf of all 25 EU member countries on trade issues, has been a driving force behind trade talks between regional blocks around the globe. His personal approach, strong negotiation skills and straight talking style have earned him admirers and critics.

Though he denies any interest in jumping from planes, a persistent rumor in Brussels has it that the commissioner enjoys parachuting. Laughing easily at such jibes, he remarked "it has been written in many portraits that I was looking like a parachutist which is not quiet the same!"

The commissioner is used to hearing stories told about him. Playing the role of sole negotiator on behalf of a group of countries -- with often divergent economic and political interests -- has meant he has had to have a thick skin.

He was the public -- and often unpopular -- face of Europe during the collapse of the Doha Development Round of trade talks in Cancun last year, which many antiglobalization and fair trade activists partly blamed on the EU's aggressive negotiating stance.

However, since the talks were salvaged in Geneva last July the commissioner is upbeat about the prospects of a world trade agreement in the coming years. He will pass the baton to former UK Cabinet minister Peter Mandelsen who takes over as trade commissioner on Nov. 1, and if there's enough time to prepare he will run in the New York marathon a week later.

Until then he is busy concluding interregional trade deals in South America, bilateral trade and economic agreements in Singapore and Thailand, and cooperation initiatives with ASEAN among other regional trade discussions.

"We've had, for the last five years, a discreet but very close advisory role in ASEAN," he said, explaining that the European Union has gone through a similar process of economic integration to Southeast Asian nations.

"There are parallels or analogies... the notion that you've got to start with economic integration, creating a sort of trust between countries," said Lamy adding, "creating that level of trust nowadays is basically about creating trust in the ability to regulate and regulate in a convergent way".

ASEAN integration was still operating, he said, on the basis of consensus, "the Asian way" and this would be something he believed the grouping may have to look at in the future to ensure effective trade dispute settlement mechanisms.

The EU is keen to develop trade links between blocks and favors inter-regional trade agreement over bilateral deals which some critics argue may weaken resolve for a fair world trade agreement.

"We've made a decision that whichever development we have under an FTA (free trade agreement) or FTA-like shape would be bloc to bloc. We know it's not easy given the heterogeneity of ASEAN but we've also been reflecting on how to do that and there is no impossibility."

At the ASEAN Economic Ministers Meeting (AEM) last weekend ministers agreed to cooperate on four common areas of interest with the EU: agriculture, electronics, fisheries and wood based industries.

The EU, with a population of 450 million, is ASEAN's second largest export market after the U.S. and a Trans-Regional EU- ASEAN Trade Initiative (TREATI) was launched last year to improve cooperation on issues such as food safety and customs. In recent years EU importers have complained of problems with contaminated seafood, a major Southeast Asian export market.

"TREATI is not a substitute for a free trade agreement. It's the building blocks," said the commissioner, claiming that Europe prefers to take a more gradual approach than trading partners such as China or Japan in strengthening trade links between regional groupings.

"They make a big announcement that they're going to have an FTA negotiation and then it takes years to get there because it's very complex," he said.

"We have sort of another way of doing it. We invest, we prioritize and then once this is done, the rest we believe is easier. This is the experience we have has in recent years in negotiations with Mercosur (South America) for example."

Whether or not he will be involved in future EU or WTO negotiations is something Commissioner Lamy refuses to comment on for the moment.

His career has spanned government, politics and banking. An advisor to Jaques Delors -- then finance minister in President Mitterand's socialist government in the early 80s, Lamy became chief of staff to Delors in 1985 when the later became President of the European Commission. He left the Commission in 1994 to head up the restructuring of the major French Bank, Credit Lyonnais and returned as trade commissioner in 1999.

Committed to the cause of European integration, Lamy is optimistic that the current low public opinion ratings for the EU among voters in European countries are not part of a steady decline in the bloc's progress.

"If you look at 50 years of European integration there have been ups and downs so it's not a sort of long constant evolution which will go either this way or that way," he said adding a word of warning.

One important thing the EU and ASEAN share in common, he said, was the need for people to feel connected to the integration process.

"This notion that you have to do things in the name of regional integration cannot remain only with technocrats or business. It must be linked to people. It's true that business is probably the engine but at some stage it has to find a democratic base in order to move and this has been our experience."

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