While forging stronger ties with the EU is one of the foreign ministry's priorities this year, Taipei-based European diplomats and business leaders as well as experts on EU affairs are divided over how Taiwan should go about achieving this goal.
While some say Taiwan's accession to the WTO might be conducive to Taiwan's establishment of a representative office in the EU and for the EU to reciprocate by opening an office in Taipei, others say obstacles to such an objective remain -- including China's attitude, the EU's political will and Taiwan's approach to the issue.
"At the end of the day, the core of Taiwan-EU relations will still center around economic and trade ties," said Su Hung-dah (
"When it comes to business, Taiwan is a fairly good partner in the eyes of the EU. But when it comes to forging ties with Taiwan in political terms, everybody becomes nervous. After all, we've got a `big brother' [China] watching us who doesn't want to see others fall in love with us," Su said.
Incentives created by Taiwan's WTO Accession
Admittedly, Beijing's sensitivity over the conferring of any international recognition to Taiwan has put a severe strain on EU-Taiwan relations, making ties rather informal and relatively under-developed.
And even when a delegation from the European Community (EC) and Taiwanese officials convened for their first round of informal trade talks in December 1981, the discussions were deemed so politically sensitive that the meeting had to be held in places other than Taipei and Brussels, and Taipei did not host the talks until October 1992.
But still, Taiwan's application for WTO membership further opened contacts between the EU and Taiwan when officials from both sides began to conduct a series of bilateral market access negotiations that was completed by July 1998.
And in view of Taiwan's approaching admission to the multilateral trading regime, some believe it's time for Taiwan to set up a representative office at the EU and for the EU to reciprocate by opening an office in Taipei.
Michael Yahuda, head of the department of international relations at the London School of Economics, said an EU representative office, if established in Taipei after Taiwan's accession to the WTO, was in the interest of the EU since it could help regulate the EU's trade ties with Taiwan.
Paul Zeven, president and CEO of Philips Electronics Industries (Taiwan) Ltd as well as vice chairman of the European Council of Commerce and Trade (ECCT), offered a similar view.
"When Taiwan is a member of the WTO, there will be a lot of bilateral discussions and a lot of monitoring going on. There will still be a lot of discussions because you might have different interpretations of some of the regulations of the WTO, which have to be done between the two parties that have made agreements," Zeven told the Taipei Times in an exclusive interview last Friday.
"If the EU doesn't have a representative office here, you've got a complicated communication process, in which we could help as the chamber of commerce. The European Commission is very aware of this," said Zeven, who just completed the ECCT's annual door-knocking trip to the EU last November.
"For a number of the working-level officials of the commission who have to monitor the implementation [of the related agreements], it's also inconvenient because they don't have a party with whom they can consult in case they have problems," Zeven added.
Klaus Rupprecht, director-general of the German Institute in Taipei, said the issue would naturally raise some "political considerations" on the part of Beijing, but "Taiwan's accession to the WTO will give a tangible reason for them to do it now.
"All WTO matters are dealt with through the EU because the member states have basically given our trade relations away, ceded to the Union. So the Union speaks on trade matters ... So it's a practical consideration. It can be explained much more easily to Beijing after Taiwan's accession [to the WTO] that these WTO-related matters have to be handled by offices in the respective capitals," Rupprecht said.
Siebe Schuur, representative of the Netherlands Trade and Investment Office in Taipei, said as statehood was not a necessary prerequisite of WTO membership, and Taiwan would enter the WTO as a separate customs territory, such a backdrop could make Taiwan's presence in the EU and the EU's presence in Taipei, if carried out in a rather de-politicized format, less provocative to Beijing.
Risky linkage issue?
In fact, even the EU has said that Taiwan's accession to the WTO may change the current scenario. "There is no EU office in Taiwan, although this may change depending on the question of Taiwan's membership of the WTO," an EU fact sheet states.
But some expressed their reservations over linking these issues.
Hugues Mignot, director of the Belgian Trade Association in Taipei, said: "Linking Taiwan's accession to the WTO and the EU's formal presence here is probably very risky because if one event doesn't happen, then the other event doesn't happen also. I think entering the WTO is one thing, and having a formal EU presence here is another. Linking the two together should not be an absolute necessity," Mignot said.
It takes two to tango
Some also stressed that the EU's political will as well as Taiwan's own approach to the issue are critical as well.
Recalling the ECCT's meeting last November with Chris Patten, the EU's external relations commissioner, Zeven cited Hong Kong's last colonial governor as saying that the EU's "budgetary constraints" and other considerations have put the issue of a setting up an EU representative office in Taiwan "on the back burner."
"He said the EU has some budgetary constraints. Last year, there were a lot of events in the Balkans which drained a large part of the budget. He said you [Taiwan] were not the only one, because the EU also didn't have any representative office in Singapore and Malaysia," Zeven recalled.
The EU's foreign-policy supremo is still in the process of prioritizing the various locations where the EU intends to set up offices, with no stated timing promised, Zeven said.
"On the European side, it is indeed a question of whether the EU wants to see it as a political issue, because China will certainly regard it as a political issue, or whether it sees it as a purely trade issue," Schuur said.
"And to some extent whether the EU will open an office here depends on how it will look," Schuur added.
Meanwhile, a Taipei-based European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, urged Taiwan to think of a feasible method of establishing its representative office in the EU before dealing with the EU at the negotiating table.
If Taiwan intends to make the nature of such an office to the EU "as political as possible," then that approach might be relatively unacceptable to the EU taken into account the EU's "one China" policy, the diplomat said.
"The government of Taiwan should conduct a coordinated evaluation of Taiwan interests on whether it should push for an EU office with a political profile which might never occur, or whether they should agree on a quicker solution, which would entail a strong economic profile," the European diplomat said.
"My basic message is: start small, take your time and things will develop. If you want to start big, you get nothing," the diplomat added.
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