Both sides want to protect their own fishery industries, which is proving to be major stumbling block. And Bangkok says the EU is asking for a more comprehensive and higher-caliber deal than Thailand has entered into with any of its existing free trade pacts.
The first round of negotiations took place last September in Brussels. The EU is Thailand’s fourth largest trading partner, after China, the US and Japan, and bilateral trade was worth around €32 billion ($34.8 billion) in the first 10 months of 2023.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Brussels and Bangkok agreed to relaunch negotiations last March, almost a decade after an earlier talks collapsed because of the EU’s opposition to a military coup in Thailand in 2014.
Among Southeast Asian nations, Thailand currently faces one of the highest import duty rates from the EU, at 11.5%, compared to 5.6% for Malaysia and 8.1% for Indonesia, according to theEconomist Intelligence Unit.
A free trade agreement with the EU would boost Thailand’s annual economic growth by 1.2%, while yearly exports and imports would grow by 2.8%, according to the Institute of Future Studies for Development, a Thai non-profit academic research organization.
She said a trade agreement with Brussels “would be comprehensive and [of a] high standard in all areas,” particularly in intellectual property, state-owned enterprises and market access for government procurement.
But almost 90 non-governmental organizations co-signed a letter in November that argued the Thai government’s potential deregulation of the sector risks seeing the return of day-rate salaries, permitting child labor and the weakening of the punitive measures designed to deter illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing.
In 2019, the European Commission delisted Thailand from the group of “warned countries” in recognition of its progress in tackling illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, having previously been given a so-called yellow card in 2015.
The original article contains 903 words, the summary contains 211 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!