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THE
European Union (EU) is pushing through with a free-trade
agreement (FTA) with members of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), but emphasized the
exclusion of
Burma
from the trade pact.
Ambassador Alistair Macdonald, head of the Delegation of
the European Commission in the Philippines, said the
political position of EU on
Burma’s
human-rights situation would not be compromised in the
proposed FTA with Asean.
Negotiating an FTA with the Asean does not require
covering all member countries with uniform tariff rules,
because the regional bloc has yet to adopt unified
customs rules, he explained.
“Asean
itself is not in a position to enter into all the
details of the FTA because it is not a customs union;
there will be a need to have a national element to back
up… like a framework declaration at the Asean,” said
Macdonald in an interview with the BusinessMirror at the
EC press launch on Monday on the 50th celebration of the
Treaty of Rome.
Under
the proposed FTA, Macdonald said the two regional blocs
are set to adopt political declarations. “ … but when it
comes to the detailed content of the FTA, the EU would
have to enter into a separate agreement with each of the
Asean member countries.”
The
separate negotiations at the national level within the
context of the FTA would also provide the EU with
opportunity to separately deal with the issues of human-
rights violations in Burma, said Macdonald. “We would
not be entering into a free-trade agreement with
Burma…”.
At the
moment, he said, it is “inconceivable” for the EU to
enter into a free trade agreement with Burma because of
its serious concerns on the human-rights situation in
the country, where the ruling junta has refused to let
the party of prodemocracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to
take over government despite winning parliamentary
elections by a landslide in 1990.
The EU
concerns on
Burma
were discussed at the EU-Asean Ministerial Meeting in
Nuremberg,
Germany,
in early March where they agreed to start negotiations
on the free-trade agreement by May at the sidelines of
the Asean Economic Ministers’ Meeting in Brunei.
The two
blocs also agreed to conclude a comprehensive trade pact
within two years, seeking to facilitate better trade and
address common issues on trade barriers like difficulty
in access of Asean products into the rich economy of EU.
“The
actual agreement on what happens to Customs duties…. is
not going to be the responsibility of Asean. It’s the
responsibility of the Philippines, it’s the
responsibility of Indonesia . . . We would have to have
an articulation, a policy statement at the Asean level
and then actual, national Customs-level agreement,” said
Macdonald. |
