The European Union-ASEAN Business Council (EU-ABC) has launched aregion-wide position paper of recommendations to boost market access aswell as increase trade and investment between Europe and ASEAN.

In a statement released on July 16, the council said Europe has beenthe region's largest source of foreign direct investment (FDI) and theposition paper explores ways to open markets up even further in linewith the ASEAN Economic Community Blueprint.

The papermentioned the elimination of non-tariff barriers to trade, highlightingissues such as cumbersome customs procedures with little harmonisationacross ASEAN and unpredictable application of regulations andprocedures, impacting businesses' ability to make informed long-terminvestment decisions.

Other issues include restrictions onforeign ownership and foreign competition and lack of harmonisedstandards or lack of mutual recognition of such standards across theregion.
On the same day, the EU published its latest EU-ASEANtrade and investment statistics which confirm that the EU is ASEAN'ssecond most important trade partner after China, accounting for 13percent of ASEAN's goods trade.

Between 2004 and 2014,ASEAN-EU trade grew at an annual compound rate of 4.7 percent with thetrade balance in ASEAN's favour, with the EU importing more from theregion than it exports to it.

Singapore is the EU's mostimportant trading partner in ASEAN, accounting for 25.1 percent ofASEAN-EU goods trade, followed by Malaysia (18.8 percent), Thailand(17.3 percent) and Vietnam (15.8 percent), it said.

Thestatistics also show that the EU was ASEAN's largest investor with 156billion EUR in FDI stocks in 2013, accounting for 22 percent ofinvestment flows into ASEAN, followed by Japan with 18.7 percent. -VNA