On March 8, senior economic officials from the Association of SoutheastAsian Nations (ASEAN) and the European Union (EU) met to prepare for the12th ASEAN Economic Ministers and EU Trade Commissioner consultationsand the upcoming 3rd ASEAN-EU Business Summit on March 9 in Hanoi.

The event took place in the framework of the 19th ASEAN Economic Ministers’ Meeting.

According to a representative from the EU delegation, Helena Konig,participants highly valued both sides’ achievements over the last twoyears.

Cooperation plans for the next two years and amechanism to share and support information between the two sides werediscussed at the event.

Both sides offeredinitiatives to provide the two sides’ experts an opportunity to shareexperience and boost the EU and ASEAN’s integration to help build theASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015, added Konig.

At the event, the officials discussed bilateral economic and tradeties, and the implementation of the economic and trade cooperationprogramme between ASEAN and the EU.

They approved anagenda that will be reported to ASEAN economic ministers and the EUTrade Commissioner, and discussed suggestions raised at the previousASEAN and EU Business Summit.

In 2012, the EU topped the list of FDI investors in ASEAN and was the third largest trading partner in ASEAN.

The EU is Vietnam’s second largest trading partner and leading importer of Vietnamese commodities.

By October last year, the EU had 1,781 FDI projects in Vietnam with a total registered capital of 33.4 billion USD.-VNA