ESF visits TWCSI2013-06-07

TWCSI invited Mr. Pascal Kerneis, Managing Director of the European Service Forum to Taiwan on June 3rd., to share the European point of view on the plurilateral service agreement, now formally called Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), and future cooperation between Taiwan and the EU.

Mr. Kerneis met with government agencies including the Bureau of Foreign Trade and the Office of Trade Negotiations to discuss about EU-Taiwan trade relations, and the process of TISA. He also visited the European Chamber of Commerce Taiwan, and exchangee opinions on trade and investment issues.

Also, Mr. Kerneis gave a speech on TISA that TWCSI and the Chun Hui Institite for Economic Research jointly held to discuss about service trade in EU, and the possible development of TISA.. Mr. Roy Lee, Deputy CEO of the WTO and RTA center and Mr.Steven Tan, Lawyer at Baker & McKenzie were invited as the chair and panelist of the seminar.

In the speech, Mr. Kerneis mentioned that trade in services accounts for almost 70% of GDP in EU countries. Due to statistical differences, service is only 20% of world export. This is mainly because that much of the value added in services can not be reflected the Balance of Payment (BOP). Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is a majoy service export in EU, especially in the financial and insurance sectors. Much of the value of these FDI also is not shown on the BOP. Therefore, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) developed "Trade in Value Added database" to take into account those value added services.

The EU has signed or is negotiating many FTAs with countries including America and Asia. However, the EU is a strong supporter of a plurilateral agreement in service - TISA to integrate regluations from many of these FTAs. Currently, there are 22 countries participating in TISA, and Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea are the only Asian countries/ economies participating. Mr. Kerneis calls for more countries to participate, and faciliate the development of TISA.