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View all search resultsCalls mount for EU to level with Indonesia on spat
Outgoing envoy Piket acknowledges an end to the days of preaching, lecturing.
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W
ith the upcoming visit of the European Union’s envoy to Indonesia, expectations are high that the representative from Brussels will express a commitment to communicate on equal ground with Jakarta to improve relations currently complicated by a trade spat.
Over the past few years, the two have been locked in negotiations about commodities, particularly nickel and palm oil, a marker of the economic gap between the Global North and the Global South.
On the one hand, the EU has taken a largely progressive but self-serving stance on environmental policy and industrialization in the midst of a climate crisis and the war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Indonesia is keen to continue industrializing in order to realize its full potential in one of the world's fastest growing regions and escape the middle-income trap.
As a result, Indonesia-EU relations have mostly been punctuated by uncertainty rather than stability, said international relations researcher M. Abiyan Habib Dzakwan of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“Policy development in the EU is very dynamic and fast-paced and was also impacted by the crisis in Ukraine and Russia, which limited communications with [external] partners like Indonesia and ASEAN,” Habib told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
To address this uncertainty, both sides must commit to communicating clearly candidly with one another, the analyst suggested.
