EU-Asia Trade Relations

Considering the growing importance of Asia in the world economy, the EU has made efforts to strengthen economic ties between the EU and Asia. In 1994, the European Commission adopted the ‘Towards a New Asian Strategy’, which emphasised the importance of raising the economic presence of the EU in Asia through tighter trade and investment. Under such circumstances, the first Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) was held in Singapore in 1996. Since then, various efforts have been made to remove or reduce trade and investment barriers in Asia. The EU has been trying to conclude Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with important trade partners in Asia. In fact, the EU started FTA negotiations with the ASEAN in 2007 and the FTA between the EU and Korea also took effect in July 2011. It is presumed that the EU and Japan will start negotiations on the FTA shortly. Asia is expected to grow economically by forming its own type of economic integrations. Asian countries have become and are becoming more and more important EU trade partners; however, some political issues have been eventually dealt with between the EU and Asia. Among all, the most important issue is ‘human rights’. Some EU member states are not positive about strengthening trade relations with Asian countries because of insufficient protection of human rights in Asia. To what extent this political issue creates negative impacts on strengthening trade relations between the EU and Asia is examined in this chapter. The questions to be considered are: how European economic integration and Asian counterparts can be integrated, to what extent the euro crisis will have negative effects on the Asian economy, and whether Europe and Asia can join together to tackle global issues. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.