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Discourse: EU continues partnership with ASEAN
European Union Ambassador to ASEAN Francisco Fontan will complete his tenure in Jakarta in July. The Jakarta Post's Dian Septiari sat down with him recently to discuss key issues between the two regional blocs.
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European Union Ambassador to ASEAN Francisco Fontan (JP/Dian Septiari)
E
em>European Union Ambassador to ASEAN Francisco Fontan will complete his tenure in Jakarta in July. The Jakarta Post's Dian Septiari sat down with him recently to discuss key issues between the two regional blocs. Below are excerpts from the interview:
Question: What are flagship cooperation initiatives that the EU has achieved with ASEAN?
Answer: We have 200 million euros in cooperation with the ASEAN Secretariat -- those are the projects we carry out with the ASEAN Secretariat and ASEAN member states.
One-third of it is essentially on biodiversity. We started three years ago with 10 million euros to support the ASEAN biodiversity center in Manila, but this year we have launched a peatland project worth 20 million euros to preserve peatland in ASEAN.
Another third deals more with underpinning the ASEAN Economic Community. Europe is the largest investor in ASEAN, we invest more than the United States, Japan and China put together.
[...] So, for us, it is extremely important that ASEAN has success with the ASEAN Economic Community, because it means easier -- more facilities for our businesspeople to do business here.
The last third of our cooperation deals with dialogue. This year we are launching a new high level dialogue between the EU and ASEAN on environment and climate change. We also have EU-ASEAN dialogue on human rights.
