An agreement between Taiwan and the Philippines on law enforcement cooperation on fishery matters in their overlapping economic waters is expected to be inked “soon,” a Ministry of Foreign Affairs official said yesterday.
The two sides have reached a consensus on signing the agreement and are in the final stages of concluding it, Elliot Charng (常以立), director-general of the ministry’s Department of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said at a news briefing.
Only some of the wording remains to be resolved, he said when asked about the pact’s progress.
Taiwanese and Philippine officials had previously estimated that the agreement would be signed by the end of this month, but when asked whether this was still the case, Charng refused to be drawn, saying only that it would be finalized “very soon.”
Since last year, Taipei and Manila have been discussing an agreement on maritime law enforcement cooperation, after a Taiwanese fisherman was shot dead on May 9 last year by Philippine Coast Guard officers in waters overlapping the exclusive economic zones of the two countries.
The shooting and Manila’s handling of the incident caused bilateral relations to plunge to their worst in years, with Taiwan imposing a freeze on hiring Filipino workers, among other sanctions.
Bilateral relations returned to normal in August last year, after the Philippines met four Taiwanese demands that included a formal apology and the start of talks on fishery cooperation.
During a subsequent series of fishery meetings, the two sides reached consensus on several issues. These include a ban on the use of force or violence when patrolling fishing grounds, the establishment of a mechanism to inform each other in the event of fishery incidents and the release of detained fishermen and boats as soon as possible.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS