Debate: EU-Taiwan trade and investment relations
Date: TUESDAY, 12 DECEMBER 2023
Speaker: Valdis Dombrovskis
Language: EN

You first ask about room for improvement of our trade and investment relationship with Taiwan and barriers to trade and investment. Both the EU and Taiwan are democratic, open and market-based economies with independent courts and institutions. Barriers to trade and investment are therefore generally low. There are, however, two sectors in which European businesses have faced significant market access barriers.  The first one is the offshore wind power sector, where we have concerns about Taiwan’s policy of local content requirements for developers. The Commission has therefore been asking Taiwan to remove them. Following our annual trade and investment dialogue in April 2023, the EU and Taiwan held several consultations, both before and after publication of Taiwan’s new draft rules on offshore wind power in September 2023. These new rules will likely be finalised before the end of the year, and we continue our dialogue in close cooperation with EU industry.  The second concern relates to market access for agrifood products, in particular meat products. Taiwan does not recognise EU zoning rules for disease control, so-called regionalisation. It leads to unnecessary extensive interruption of meat exports even for regions where diseases are not present.  Moreover, slow approval procedures for EU agricultural products means that there are currently over 30 pending market access applications from different EU Member States. At this year’s Trade and Investment Dialogue, Taiwan agreed to launch a detailed process to resolve these issues in a comprehensive manner.  Your second question asked about the plan to deepen our trade and investment relationship with Taiwan, and how we can boost our mutual resilience against geopolitical shocks. In 2022, the Commission upgraded its annual trade consultations to a Trade and Investment Dialogue, co-chaired by DG Trade’s Director-General and Taiwan’s Minister of Economy.  We expanded the scope of our discussions from traditional market access topics to cover also security related aspects of trade such as FDI screening, sanctions and export control of dual use goods. We also covered research and innovation, and we also have set up a dedicated dialogue on semiconductors. This year’s Trade and Investment Dialogue took place on 28 April.  In addition to dialogues with Taiwan authorities, we have organised two major business events in Taipei this year. The European Innovation Week and the European Investment Forum attracted large amounts of EU and Taiwanese businesses. Organising business-to-business events like this is a core part of boosting the resilience of both the EU and Taiwanese economies.  Your third question concerns the possibility of exploring options for a resilient supply chain agreement between the EU and Taiwan. Here, first, I want to emphasise that our work on supply chains need to be results driven.  We have thus developed several strands of work across the Commission, focusing on supply chains with Taiwan and involving a number of Commission departments including DG TRADE, DG Connect, DG GROW, DG RTD, as well as the European External Action Service. I already mentioned a dedicated work stream on semiconductors.  At this year’s Trade and Investment Dialogue, we agreed to start discussions on own digital trade facilitation measures. Moreover, at the Industrial Policy Dialogue this summer, discussions focused on areas such as SMEs, internationalisation, robotics, artificial intelligence, industrial skills and research and innovation. On research and innovation, the Commission has launched a series of initiatives to increase participation of Taiwan in Horizon Europe.  Your final question asks about our envisaged timeline. As explained, we are in constant contact with Taiwanese partners across all subject areas. The Trade and Investment Dialogue and the European Investment Forum take place on a yearly basis, with intense contacts to follow up work in between. When it comes to specific work on market access issues, we expect to engage on EU zoning rules for animal diseases, regionalisation, in specific discussions with the relevant Taiwanese authorities early next year.  On local content requirements for offshore wind power investments, we will assess the final rules once adopted and measure the progress achieved. As I said, our expectation is to engage in more detail with Taiwan to explore ways to remove these long-standing market access barriers. It is now up to Taiwan to demonstrate that it is willing to accommodate our concerns, which would help strengthen our trade and investment relationships even further.