ASEAN-European Union FTA negotiations: Waiting for Godot ?

Julien Chaisse, World Trade Institute, Bern

Abstract

On 23 April 2007 EU Council approved negotiating mandates for trade accords with the three rapidly-growing Asian economies: India, South Korea, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The agreements are said to boost EU exports by more than 40 billion euros per year, and raise the bloc’s GDP by 0.13 percent. “Copenhagen Economics” and France’s CEPII, forecast that EU exports to ASEAN would grow by 24.2 percent. Since the beginning of negotiations the EU is pushing strong reforms in investment, services and intellectual property. Without success for the time being. The paper will investigate the present scope of negotiations and potential outcome. It will elaborate on mutual interest, political context and the important legal background on the EU side. The investment-related provisions of free trade agreements concluded by the European Union are indeed generally not as comprehensive as those of traditional BITs. One reason for this is that EU Member States have so far resisted to hand competency in negotiating some of the most substantial BIT provisions entirely to the European Commission. Member States’ own BITs thus remain important and some of their provisions go beyond those of EU FTAs. In fact, the EU agreements refer directly to bilateral relations with Member States where certain investment provisions are concerned. http://www.nccr-trade.org/ip-11-forthcoming/asean.html