TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsEU ambassador: Lots of mutual homework ahead of CEPA enactment
EU Ambassador to Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam Denis Chaibi sat down with The Jakarta Post’s M. Taufiqurrahman, Mark Lempp and Deni Ghifari on Friday to discuss what’s next in the process and how it will change the trade landscape.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
European Union Ambassador to Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam Denis Chaibi (second right) claps as Coordinating Economy Minister Airlangga Hartarto (center left) and European Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maros Sefcovic (center right) show signed documents on Sept. 23, 2025, during a ceremony in Nusa Dua, Bali, to mark the substantive conclusion of the Indonesia-European Union Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IEU-CEPA). (REUTERS/Johannes P. Christo)
N
egotiations on the Indonesia-European Union Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IEU-CEPA) finally concluded in September after 10 years of wrangling, but the two sides have a lot to do before the free trade agreement (FTA) comes into effect.
EU Ambassador to Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam Denis Chaibi sat down with The Jakarta Post’s M. Taufiqurrahman, Mark Lempp and Deni Ghifari on Friday to discuss what’s next in the process and how it will change the trade landscape.
Below are excerpts from the interview.
Question: What’s next after the completion of the negotiations?
Answer: For the next six months, legal scrubbing. So legal scrubbing is these special lawyers in Indonesia and the EU comparing notes on the agreement and making sure that it's coherent, tight, coherent with other FTAs, coherent with World Trade Organization rules. They go through the text and kind of clean it.
What's very important is that cleaning the text is not a renegotiation of what has been agreed, and we have to make sure that there's no renegotiation but that there's also a lot of engagement. [...]
If everyone plays ball, works very hard, focused, [in] six months it can be done. It's tough, but it can be done. Then we move to the signing ceremony. We try to do something nice, political, and then start the ratification procedure.
