EU, Philippines to resume talks on partnership deal
Business World (Manila) | Monday, February 2, 2009
EU, Philippines to resume talks on partnership deal
BY JESSICA ANNE D. HERMOSA, Reporter
EUROPEAN Commission delegates will be arriving in Manila next week to continue negotiations for an agreement that will govern the two economies’ political and economic relations, officials said.
The partnership and cooperation agreement (PCA) is needed before the Philippines can participate in a free trade deal the European Commission wants to forge with select members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the officials said.
European Commission representatives led by EU Director for Asia James Moran will be in the country from Feb. 9 to 10, EU Ambassador Alistair MacDonald said.
But instead of starting formal talks this month as earlier scheduled, the meeting will likely be a consultation process continuing previous ones conducted in Brussels late last year, the Philippines’ Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Edsel T. Custodio said.
"The Philippines prefers to start pre-negotiations because President [Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo] has not approved [our side’s] negotiating panel yet," Mr. Custodio said in Filipino in a telephone interview last week.
The PCA will cover a broad range of areas such as development cooperation, trade and investment facilitation, and common policies for protecting human rights, Mr. Custodio said.
The key benefit for the Philippines would be the "institutionalization" of how the EU grants overseas development aid, he said.
The agreement is also a necessary step before a free trade pact.
"It is a requirement that a PCA be put in place before there is a free trade agreement," Mr. MacDonald told BusinessWorld at the sidelines of a Philippine Business for Social Progress meeting last week.
The European Commission, he added, may go ahead and negotiate bilateral free trade deals with select members of the ASEAN instead of waiting for all of the region’s members to conclude PCA talks.
"If there’s a group of ASEAN countries ready to go forward, then there is no reason for us to wait. I very much hope the Philippines would be a member of the leading group," Mr. MacDonald said.
Mr. Custodio confirmed this, saying in Filipino: "It will take long for them (the European Commission) to negotiate an ASEAN free trade agreement because ASEAN countries have varying positions. What I heard from Brussels is they will negotiate only with those who are ready."
The two parties, however, will have to smooth out a sticking point in the PCA - human rights.
"What we disagree on is human rights issues. We have a different view on that," Mr. Custodio said.
The Philippine ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the European Union, Cristina G. Ortega had said human rights could be a sticking point in the negotiations.
Intellectual property rights is another sticking point.
Formal talks for the PCA will likely be concluded in two years, the same time it took Indonesia to complete such a deal, Mr. Custodio said.
