9 European Commission, “Agreement with Singapore to boost EU-Asia trade”, 13 February 2019, available on trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=1980. Since the end of the Second World War, sovereign European countries have concluded treaties and have thus cooperated and harmonized policies (or grouped sovereignties) in a growing number of areas, in the so-called European integration project or in the European construction (French: the European construction). The following timeline describes the legal beginnings of the European Union (EU) – the most important framework for this association. The EU has inherited many of its current responsibilities and membership of the European Communities (EC), which were created in the 1950s in the spirit of the Schuman Declaration. EuVFTA is the second comprehensive trade agreement between an ASEAN member state and the EU and can certainly serve as a model if the EU decides to conclude free trade agreements (“FTAs”) with other ASEAN countries or with ASEAN as a regional bloc in the future. With EUVFTA, Vietnam is expanding its FTA network with another strategic economic and trade partner. Vietnam currently has bilateral free trade agreements in place with Japan, South Korea, Chile and the Eurasian Economic Union (which includes Russia). It is also a party to six regional free trade agreements concluded by ASEAN member states with China, Hong Kong, India and others, and is a party to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which includes Australia, Canada, Mexico and New Zealand, among others. EU policies are usually promulgated by EU directives, which are then transposed into the national legislation of their Member States, and by EU regulations which are immediately applicable in all Member States. Lobbying at EU level by special interest groups will be regulated in an attempt to reconcile the efforts of private initiatives with decision-making in the public interest[141] The agreement is expected to be the first free trade agreement with a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the third agreement with an Asian country after South Korea and Japan from an EU perspective. Singapore is the EU`s 14th largest trading partner. 41 The EU`s share of world trade in goods and services is 16.7% and its GDP is expected to increase from 15% to 9% by 2050.
Trade Policy Review, Report of the Secretariat, European Union, WT/TPR/S/395, 10. December 2019, 25; PWC, “The Long View: How Will the Global Economic Order Change by 2050?”, (2017), p. 4; L. Hwee Yeo, “EU-ASEAN Security Cooperation”, in S. Economides and J. Sperling, EU Security Strategies: Extending the EU System of Security Governance (2018), 67, 77.1 The Ministry of Trade and Industry, Singapore (MTI), The EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement enters into force (2019), 1; European Commission, “EU-Singapore agreements explained”, available on ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/eu-singapore-agreement/agreement-explained/. The sharp increase in outstanding factual presentations is due to new trade agreements between the UK and its partners following the UK`s withdrawal from the EU. The United Kingdom looked forward to working with the WTO Secretariat and its partners in the preparation of the substantive presentations. EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said: “Our trade agreement with Singapore is further proof of our commitment to fair and rules-based trade. The agreement will benefit workers, farmers and businesses of all sizes, here and in Singapore. It also contains strict clauses to protect human and workers` rights and the environment.
This agreement means that we have concluded 16 EU trade agreements in the last five years. This brings the total to 42 trade agreements with 73 partners, representing one third of total EU trade. It is the largest network of its kind in the world. Switzerland was invited to vote in September 2020 on the termination of the agreement with the European Union on the free movement of persons. [202] However, the SVP`s request is rejected because the electorate rejected the SPP`s request to withdraw immigration control. [203] The EU has long sought to mitigate the effects of free markets by protecting workers` rights and preventing social and environmental dumping. To this end, it has adopted laws establishing minimum standards for employment and the environment. These include the Working Time Directive and the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive.
The EU has also sought to coordinate Member States` social security and health systems in order to facilitate the exercise of the right to free movement of individuals and to ensure that they continue to have access to social security and health services in other Member States. EU troops have been deployed to peacekeeping missions from Central and North Africa to the Western Balkans and Western Asia. [212] EU military operations are supported by a number of entities, including the European Defence Agency, the European Union Satellite Centre and the European Union Military Staff. [213] Frontex is an EU agency created to manage cooperation between national border guards who secure their external borders. The aim is to detect and stop illegal immigration, human trafficking and terrorist infiltration. In 2015, the European Commission presented its proposal to create a new European Border and Coast Guard Agency which, together with national authorities, will have a stronger role and mandate in border management. In an EU of 27 members, substantial security and defence cooperation increasingly relies on cooperation between all Member States. [214] Under the trade agreement, Singapore will levy all remaining tariffs on EU products. The agreement also offers new opportunities for EU service providers, including in sectors such as telecommunications, environmental services, mechanical engineering, data processing and maritime transport. It will also make the business environment more predictable.
The agreement will also provide legal protection for 138 iconic European food and drink products known as geographical indications. Singapore is already the third destination for these European specialties. Singapore has also agreed to remove trade barriers alongside tariffs in key sectors, for example by recognising EU safety tests for cars and many electronic devices, or by adopting labels that EU companies use for textiles. In 1957, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the Federal Republic of Germany sign the Treaty of Rome, which creates the European Economic Community (EEC) and establishes a customs union. They also signed another pact establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for cooperation in the development of nuclear energy. Both treaties entered into force in 1958. [59] The legal text of CEFTA contains a number of declarations and common arrangements annexed to the Agreement, which form an integral part of the Agreement pursuant to Article 17.21. The banking participation agreement requires the Vietnamese authorities to “favourably evaluate” the investments of EU financial institutions, which must hold up to 49% of the interest rate capital in two Vietnamese commercial banks within five years of the entry into force of THE TEUFTA. There is a specific split to exclude four commercial banks from this agreement, namely the Vietnam Investment and Development Bank (BIDV), Vietinbank, Vietcombank and Agribank, in which the Vietnamese government currently holds a majority stake. Given the continued interest of foreign investors in Vietnamese banks, we expect EU financial institutions to try to use this exemption for foreign direct investment in due course.
In addition, it could indeed be a deliberate attempt by the Vietnamese government to introduce a more diversified investor base into its banking sector – the existing foreign minority investors in this sector are mainly Asian banks. However, the fact that this has been limited to just two Vietnamese banks is an indication that this may not be a precursor to broader foreign-invested reforms by Vietnamese banks – this, as well as how the Vietnamese government interprets this obligation in the context of its broader regulatory framework, remains to be seen. Two of the initial fundamental objectives of the European Economic Community were the development of a common market, which later became a single market, and a customs union between its Member States. The internal market includes the free movement of goods, capital, persons and services within the EU[234] and the customs union includes the application of a common external tariff to all goods entering the market. Once the goods have been admitted to the market, they can no longer be subject to customs duties, discriminatory taxes or import quotas because they travel domestically. The non-EU states iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland participate in the single market, but not in the customs union. [126] Half of EU trade is subject to harmonised EU legislation. [242] The EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement, the EUSFTA for short, is a bilateral free trade and investment agreement signed and ratified[1],[2] between the European Union and Singapore.
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