Ambassador Rumen Alexandrov participates in the regular meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs and Trade Council
11 November 2021 News
The Permanent Representative of the Republic of Bulgaria to the EU, Ambassador Rumen Alexandrov, lead the Bulgarian delegation for the participation in the regular meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs and Trade Council, which took place today in Brussels.
The Council discussed the current state of the World Trade Organization reform, the economic relations with the United States and the implementation of EU trade agreements with third countries. Ministers also had the opportunity to talk informally with the US Trade Representative Catherine TAI
"Bulgaria supports the package of proposals of the European Commission for the WTO reform. The package contains concrete views on change in the World Organization and provides an answer to the most important challenges that world trade is currently facing, such as the fight against COVID-19", Ambassador Rumen Alexandrov said in his speech. He noted the growing need for the organization to adapt its activities and rules to the development of technology, Internet-based trade, the growing share of services in the global economy, and the importance of direct foreign investment.
EU trade ministers also discussed the current state of economic relations with the United States. "Bulgaria supports the establishment of the Trade and Technology Council (TTC) as a broad platform for cooperation with a strategic partner such as the United States and believes that the Council will provide a good framework for this. For us, the role of issues such as small and medium-sized enterprises, regulatory cooperation and conformity assessment, connectivity, security in data transfer, as well as the importance of cooperation on WTO reform, equity and coordinated action on non-market practices in other countries, detrimental to European and American business", stressed in a speech on the topic the head of the Bulgarian delegation.
After more than two months of intensive negotiations, on October 31, 2021, the EU and the US reached an agreement that provides for Washington to suspend from January 1, 2022, the application of additional duties, and allow duty-free imports of steel and aluminium from the EU within certain of quotas. The two countries will start negotiations on a global agreement on sustainable steel and aluminium production. The agreement eliminates one of the major problems in US-EU bilateral relations.
At the Council meeting, the European Commission presented a Report on the implementation and enforcement of EU trade agreements. This is the fifth consecutive report that the Commission presents on agreements with third countries. It presents the new instruments of trade defence, the use of export and investment control policies and monitoring, and their enforcement under the Generalized System of Preferences. Among the concrete actions in the last year that have contributed to facilitating EU exports and protecting key EU interests, are the removal of 33 trade barriers with 22 partner countries, and as a result of the removed barriers European companies have realized more exports worth 5.4 billion euros. An online market access platform has been set up that provides basic support to 584,000 SMEs so that they can export faster and more easily. Data on preferential trade in EU goods in 2020 show that among the 67 trading partners covered by the report, Switzerland remains the EU's leading trading partner with 21.5% of trade, followed by Turkey (11.3%). , Japan (9.4%), Norway (7.8%) and South Korea (7.7%).