EU-ASEAN Business Summit: EU Looking for a Growth in Asia

While the EU is desperately trying to boost its economic growth, Asian countries are rising. Although the growth predictions foresee a mild slowdown in 2013, some Asian countries are experiencing growth rates that the EU can only dream of.

While China is still the leader when it comes to economic growth, other countries in the region also hide untapped business potential. Therefore, the European Commission is making a lot of effort to enhance mutual trade cooperation with Asian countries, for example ASEAN members.

There has been the 3rd EU-ASEAN Business Summit taking place in Hanoi from 8th to 9th March, where representatives of both sides discussed ways how to enhance mutual cooperation. The EU and ASEAN create a huge market of over a billion people with trade volume exceeding 200 billion EUR in 2011. The
EU is already very active in negotiating free trade agreements with individual ASEAN members and as a result, the first agreement was concluded with Singapore in December last year. Several broad topics were discussed during the Summit, from financial services to pharmaceuticals. Both parties agreed that setting up the right regulatory framework is of the utmost importance for mutual business cooperation, especially in the financial sector. ASEAN representatives promised that they will push for opening the domestic financial markets to allow European players enter more easily, especially in telecommunication sector.

Furthermore, both sides stressed the need to improve access to finance for SMEs and several options were suggested, for example the introduction of non-cash payment mechanisms. Furthermore, new measures that will facilitate inflow of skilled technical workers from the EU to ASEAN countries should be introduced, not only in the ICT but also for example in automotive. In this sector, ASEAN representatives assured their EU counterparts that they would work on adopting higher technical and safety standards and achieving a single regulatory regime by 2015.