European chamber to release study on potential EU-Taiwan trade pact
FocusNews Channel Taiwan
European chamber to release study on potential EU-Taiwan trade pact
By Jeffrey Wu
16 September 2012
Taipei, Sept. 16 (CNA) A study on a potential trade agreement between the European Union and Taiwan will be released on Sept. 20 in Taipei, according to the European Chamber of Commerce Taipei (ECCT).
Following the groundbreaking study in 2008 on the implications of a potential trade deal between the EU and Taiwan, this year the ECCT once again conducted a follow-up study on the potential impact of an agreement for both the EU and Taiwan.
The results will be announced at the ECCT’s monthly members’ lunch, where Martin Thelle, partner at consultancy Copenhagen Economics and chief researcher in charge of the new study, will give a presentation, the ECCT said in a statement.
The new study will update figures from the past four years and take into account recent developments in regional and global trade, the statement said.
Those developments include the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed between Taiwan and China and the free trade agreement between the EU and South Korea, it said.
In his presentation, Thelle will quantify which industries would benefit by how much and what the impact on trade and economic growth would be for both the EU and Taiwan if they sign a trade agreement, the statement said.
According to the ECCT, European corporations are the largest foreign investors in Taiwan with over US$30 billion in foreign direct investments.
Although the EU’s investment amounts were ahead of the United States and Japan, EU-Taiwan trade and investment relations could actually be larger than they are now, compared to those between the EU and other Asian countries, the chamber said. Between 2000 and 2008, EU investments in Taiwan only increased by 57 percent, while more than doubling in Singapore and South Korea and even tripling to 53 billion euros (US$69.5 billion) in Hong Kong, the ECCT said.
