KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 11 – Outgoing European Union (EU) Ambassador to Malaysia Michalis Rokas has expressed confidence that the decision to restart negotiations on the stalled Malaysia-EU Free Trade Agreement (MEUFTA) is imminent.
“Having started the stock-taking exercise last year, the decision to restart talks on MEUFTA may take, at the maximum, a couple of months,” said Rokas, who will take up his new posting in North Macedonia on Sept 1, 2024, after a four-year stint in Malaysia.
Negotiations for the free trade agreement (FTA) began in October 2010, with eight rounds held until September 2012, but stalled following Malaysia’s reservations over palm oil, procurement policies, subsidies and EU’s sustainability clauses.
Rokas said EU-Malaysia trade ties are significant while Europe’s 27-member grouping is currently a vital source of foreign direct investment “despite the fact we don’t have a free trade agreement.”
“This, together with both European and Malaysian manufacturers and their respective business sectors wanting an agreement, makes a compelling case to restart negotiations for the stalled Malaysia-EU FTA,” he told Bernama.
It was Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim who breathed new life into the stalled MEUFTA talks after leading a successful trade and investment mission to Germany in March this year, when he said Malaysia had finally agreed to rekindle discussions on the trade pact to strengthen bilateral relations and regional integration further.
Rokas said “there is a huge untapped potential and it (MEUFTA) is something that throughout my four years I have tried to bring back and restart negotiations on.”
Not only is there an almost unanimous call for it by EU businesses operating in Malaysia, EU industry and the European Chamber of Commerce, but more importantly, it is a call from Malaysian businesses that operate here, including the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM).
“If we restart, we can conclude rapidly. Let’s be serious about it as nobody has time to waste and that there are a lot of challenges globally,” he said.
He admitted there are undoubtedly touchy and sensitive issues between Malaysia and the EU, “but trust me, countries which negotiated FTAs with the EU saw the benefits at the end of the talks and the resulting FTAs were transformative for their own economies.”
He cited that even Vietnam, a socialist republic with a one-party system led by the Communist Party, recorded a one-third increase in the volume and value of trade following its FTA with the EU.
