EU ‘not worried’ about being left on APEC sidelines

Date: 16/11/1995

THE European Union will be left on the sidelines as some of the world's top trading powers meet this week.

But as the United States, Japan, Canada and China, along with 14 other Pacific Rim nations, meet to try to firm up plans for free trade by 2020, EU officials insist they are not worried about being left out.

“So long as it liberalises internally and does not erect new barriers, we are in favour of it,” said Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan, who told European Voice he would be watching “with interest” the progress made at the 16-17 November meeting of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) members in Osaka.

At their last meeting, APEC countries promised to open trade between developed members by 2010 and among the rest by 2020. If their ambitions are realised, the market could provide massive opportunities for European traders. The 18 APEC countries, with a population of 2.1 billion people, account for nearly half the world's trade and economic output.

The EU, unsuccessful in its bid to get a seat at the table at previous APEC meetings, is taking a more philosophical line this time . “It would be best if the open regionalism concept could be extended and any privileges could be agreed on a most-favoured-nation basis,” said Brittan. “But even if it can't, as long as it lowers barriers and doesn't raise them, we will support it.”

The Commissioner says he is not worried about EU interests as other trading partners sit down for a round of deal-making without the Union. “We know what's going on. We have informal dialogues with both sides and we're not lacking in information.”

The EU was not always so relaxed about APEC meetings. “At the beginning (in 1989) there was a feeling this was new and shocking,” said a top Brittan aide. “But that feeling went away with the successful conclusion of the Uruguay Round” of world trade talks sponsored by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). “There's no more fear of APEC now than there is of fortress Europe,” said the aide.

But just to ensure that they will not be excluded from privileged ties with Asia, the Union is working on a new idea for next year: an “Asia-Europe summit” next March gathering heads of state from Japan, China, Korea and the ASEAN club of South-East Asian states, together with EU leaders.

Commission officials insist the idea is not a retaliatory measure in response to the EU's exclusion from APEC meetings, saying that Asian states conceived the plan.

But the US will not be invited, said the Brittan aide, adding: “We don't want to have too many people at the beginning.”

During the bitter auto dispute between Washington and Tokyo, Brittan offered his services as mediator. “We helped Japan stand up for its multilateral rights” in that battle, said the aide, adding that when Washington pulled out of a multilateral financial services deal earlier this year, “ASEAN helped Europe win,” supporting the Union and allowing a multilateral deal to be reached without the US.

He went on: “Asia and Europe have a common interest in multilateral trade. The region whose commitment is the least clear is the United States.”

American officials are unlikely to make any offers of tariff cutting at the APEC meeting, but they want the Osaka reunion to restore US-Japan ties bruised by trade disputes, a bank scandal and the alleged rape of a young Okinawa girl by US soldiers. Most of all, Washington wants APEC to survive as an institution and not be eroded by watered-down principles and partial deals.