Berlin (VNA) – Ministerfor Economic Affairs and Energy of Germany Peter Altmaier has welcomed thesigning of the RegionalComprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement between 15 signatories inAsia-Pacific.

The trade agreement isan important contribution to free and rules-based world trade, he said onNovember 16, adding that the EU has already concluded its own free trade pactswith Japan, the Republic of Korea (RoK), Singapore and Vietnam and is workinghard to conclude an investment agreement with China.

🔯 Meanwhile, foreign policy spokesmanfor the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, Jürgen Hardt,called on the European Union (EU) to push ahead with its own agreement.

The RCEP agreement is a wake-up callfor the EU, he added. In a statement, Hardt underlinedthat the conclusion of the RCEP agreement in Asia creates another trade power centrewithout Europe and the US. The EU can no longer afford to putfree trade negotiations on the back burner, because other nations will set thestandards and Europeans will fall behind, he said. German media also highlighted thesigning of the trade agreement, saying it will bolster economic integration inAsia-Pacific and stand up to trade protectionism.

An article of NeuesDeutschland newspaper commented that the century of Asia has come following thesigning of the RCEP agreement.

Asia’s intra-regionaltrade is projected to lure the global economy’s core to the continent, itcontinued.

The FrankfurterAllgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper quoted Dr Jeffrey Wilson, a ResearchDirector at the Perth USAsia Centre in Australia, as saying that the RCEPagreement will be the most important regional trade agreement ever signed sincethe establishment of the World Trade Organisation in 1994 and projected tochange the region’s economic and strategic maps.

𒉰 The RCEP agreement sets anexample for countries to overcome political differences and reduce tradebarriers in pursuit of developmental benefits, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, chairmanof the Kuhn Foundation, said.

The US expert saidwhat makes RCEP especially noteworthy is that even though member states haveextraneous political differences, they all view anticipated economic gain ofmultilateralism as sufficiently motivating to overcome such differences. Allshould root for RCEP's success, he noted.

The trade pact wasformally signed on November 15 within the framework of the recent 37th ASEANSummit and Related Summits hosted by Vietnam, after eight years of negotiation.

The RCEP agreement isthe largest free trade agreement (FTA) in the world, covering a market of 2.2billion people, or almost 30 percent of the world's population, with a combinedgross domestic product (GDP) of 26.2 trillion US dollars or about 30 percent ofglobal GDP.

ꦚ It includes 10 ASEANmembers, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, thePhilippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, and the bloc's five FTA partnersof China, Japan, the RoK, Australia and New Zealand./.