Publication

Last year the European Union began negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) with South Korea, India and ASEAN. Each negotiation process has taken a course of its own with different speeds and depths, as would be expected, since each FTA partner has its own very distinct character. The FTAs with these trading partners are important for two reasons. First, they are among the EU’s first round of new generation FTAs as called for in the Global Europe: Competing in the World communiqué, which spells out the EU’s external agenda for improving its competitiveness in the global economy. Second, if and when they are signed, they will be the EU’s first bilateral FTAs in the region.