A delegation of EU lawmakers is to visit Taiwan from Dec. 19 to 21, the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade announced on Thursday.
European lawmaker Bernd Lange, who chairs the committee, said he hopes the visit will yield fruitful discussions on deepening Taiwan-EU collaboration.
The committee, which has never before sent a delegation to Taiwan, discussed collaboration with the nation on Thursday, and the debate was markedly more optimistic than a debate the day before on trade with China, during which members addressed Beijing’s increasingly aggressive practices.
In his opening statement, Lange said that as soon the negotiation of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment concluded two years ago, the committee began discussing a similar agreement with Taiwan.
However, there has been no breakthrough on an agreement with Taiwan, he added.
The delegation is to be led by European lawmaker Iuliu Winkler, the committee member in charge of affairs with Taiwan, China and Hong Kong.
Winkler said aside from working together on supply chain security, Taiwan and the EU should also work on bolstering collaboration on research and development projects.
European lawmaker Reinhard Butikofer, chair of the parliament’s Delegation for Relations with the People’s Republic of China, said that he would like to see bilateral partnerships between Taiwan and the EU in as many areas as possible, such as between trade unions and non-governmental organizations.
Butikofer also addressed a recently published impact assessment report on the signing of a Taiwan-EU agreement on supply chain resilience, saying that the findings would encourage “thinking outside the box” as the two sides seek to advance their relationship.
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-wong effective from 5:30pm, while local governments canceled school and work for tomorrow. A land warning is expected to be issued tomorrow morning before it is expected to make landfall on Wednesday, the agency said. Taoyuan, and well as Yilan, Hualien and Penghu counties canceled work and school for tomorrow, as well as mountainous district of Taipei and New Taipei City. For updated information on closures, please visit the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration Web site. As of 5pm today, Fung-wong was about 490km south-southwest of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan's southernmost point.
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Almost a quarter of volunteer soldiers who signed up from 2021 to last year have sought early discharge, the Legislative Yuan’s Budget Center said in a report. The report said that 12,884 of 52,674 people who volunteered in the period had sought an early exit from the military, returning NT$895.96 million (US$28.86 million) to the government. In 2021, there was a 105.34 percent rise in the volunteer recruitment rate, but the number has steadily declined since then, missing recruitment targets, the Chinese-language United Daily News said, citing the report. In 2021, only 521 volunteers dropped out of the military, the report said, citing
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