Negotiating Services with ASEAN: The EU between the WTO and Japan

Abstract

In future Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations between the EU and individual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members, trade in services will feature prominently. Such negotiations will be constrained by the network of ASEAN's bilateral Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with Japan, because the EPAs' approach differs from the EU approach at the World Trade Organization's Doha Round in two ways. First, Japan adopted the approach to services trade liberalization favoured by ASEAN. Second, Japan accepted ASEAN's regulations in the services sectors that they liberalized and allowed the movement of certain categories of natural persons to Japan. In return, ASEAN countries opened a large number of services sectors to Japanese investment.