Page 11 - EU_ASEN Relations: Perspectives From Malaysia

Due to the enormous economic development in recent years, the ASEAN states

are now accepted as a more important and equal trading partner. The European
Commission presented its strategy paper "Europe and Asia: A Strategic

Framework for Enhanced Partnerships" in September 2001, and this was
followed up with another strategy paper with the title “A New Partnership with

South East Asia” in 2003. The latter launched the Trans-Regional EU-ASEAN

Trade Initiative, abbreviated as TREATI; amongst other activities.

Both ASEAN and the EU are regional organisations that are closely connected

by trade relations. The ASEAN states represent the EU's third largest trading
partner outside of Europe (after the USA and China) with more than 250 billion

Euro of trade in goods and services. At the same time, the EU member states
are ASEAN’s second largest trading partner after China, accounting for

approximately 13% of the ASEAN trade.

Consequently, the most important topic in the EU-ASEAN relations in the

2000s was the intention to create a region-to-region Free Trade Agreement
(FTA). Negotiations were launched in 2007, but paused in 2009 since the EU

did not see enough progress on the ASEAN side. Instead, the EU started to

negotiate bilateral FTAs with all 10 ASEAN member countries, conceived as
building blocks towards a future region-to-region agreement.

Negotiations with Singapore and Malaysia were launched in 2010, followed
by negotiations with Vietnam in June 2012, Thailand in March 2013, the

Philippines in December 2015, and finally Indonesia in July 2016.
Negotiations of an investment protection agreement are also under way with

Myanmar. The European Commission finalised negotiations of a bilateral FTA
with Singapore and Vietnam in October 2014 and December 2015

respectively. In March 2017, it was decided amongst the EU and senior

ASEAN officials to establish a framework for talks to restart the negotiations

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