Free Trade, Key to the Economic Prosperity: Study tour on EU-ROK FTA
Opening new markets makes our economies grow — only an active EU free trade and investment policy can achieve that.’ As said the EU Commissioner for Trade, this is also the case for Korea. Korea owes its outstanding economic growth over the past decades to the free trade regime.
The EU-ROK FTA which entered into force in July 2011 was the result of this shared economic interest between the EU and Korea for further expanding market access. The agreement is considered the most comprehensive FTA negotiated by the EU, since it is also tackling issues, which are not ready for multilateral discussion and are going beyond the market opening that can be achieved in the WTO context. Three years have passed since its full implementation and it is right time to carefully see the effects of the FTA on the economies of both sides, i.e. changes in the trade volumes and structure.
Against this background, a group of young liberal-minded Koreans was invited by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation to Brussels to deepen their knowledge on the EU-ROK FTA and to assess its benefits as well as what still needs to be improved. The Korean delegation to Brussels consists of six members; most of them are actively involved in NGOs and media dedicated to uphold liberal values in Korea.
The study tour program was designed to offer the participants various meetings and discussions with the European experts who were or are actually working for the political and economic relations between the European Union and Korea. The participants could also visit the premises of the EU, i.e. the Commission and the European Parliament, where they could grab a vivid picture of the work and characteristics of the Union and meet with the EU officials who gladly shared with their insights and expertise.
In addition to the trade issues, the participants could also discuss more comprehensive issues, including the European single market, the political relations between the EU and Korea, the work of the Alliance for Liberal Democrats in Europe (ALDE) in the European Parliament, and the works and programs of the European Students for Liberty. The intensive three-day program also included a talk with a member of Korean delegation to EU on the FTA, which allowed participants to get more detailed background explanation from Korean perspective.
