European Union–Singapore Free Trade Agreement

EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement

EU
Singapore

The EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement, acronym EUSFTA, is a planned freetrade and bilateral investment treaty between the European Union and Singapore. EUSFTA has been negotiated since March 2010 and its text has been publicly accessible since June 2015.[1] The negotiations on goods and services were completed in 2012, on investment protection on October 17, 2014.[2]

The agreement is expected to be the first free trade agreement with a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the second agreement with an Asian country after South Korea from an EU perspective.

Content of the Agreement

The EUSFTA covers the following key areas:

  • Elimination of import duties and taxes 
  • Improved market access for trade in services 
  • More government procurement opportunities 
  • Strengthened cooperation in customs and trade facilitation matters
  • Removal of technical and non-tariff barriers to trade 
  • Cooperation in the implementation of sanitary and phytosanitary measures 
  • Enhanced protection of intellectual property rights 
  • Robust disciplines on competition policy 
  • Renewed commitment to sustainable development

Ratification

According to an opinion of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) in Luxembourg, EUSFTA is a so-called mixed agreement. In order to be able to come into full force in its present form, all 28 individual EU countries would, therefore, have to ratify the agreement.

The opinion was requested by the European Commission, which wanted to confirm whether the EU institutions alone was entitled to conclude the agreement, without the individual member states being parties.[3]

See also

Sources

  1. ↑ "EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. Authentic text as of May 2015". 2015-06-29. Retrieved 2017-07-10.
  2. ↑ "Singapore - Trade - European Commission". 2017-02-22. Retrieved 2017-07-10.
  3. ↑ "EuGH bremst Freihandelsabkommen EUSFTA" (in German). 2017-05-25. Retrieved 2017-07-10.
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