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Trade agreement between EU, South Korea to be fully implemented next year

Xinhua, October 1, 2015 Adjust font size:

The European Union (EU) announced on Thursday that its free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea would be fully implemented from mid-2016.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Competitiveness Council, where ministers in charge of competition from EU member states gathered to discuss the monitoring of industrial competitiveness mainstreaming in Luxemburg.

The EU-South Korea FTA was signed in October 2010. It includes rules on trade-related issues such as competition and state aid, intellectual property and public procurement.

The council said that, according to the agreement, almost all import duties on products between the two sides will be eliminated.

Actually, most of the accord has been provisionally applied since 1 July 2011, and the majority of import duties have been removed since then.

As the two parties committed to eliminate 98.7 percent of duties in trade value within five years, import duties will be eliminated on all products except a limited number of agricultural products since 1 July 2016, the council said in a statement.

The EU-South Korea FTA is the first of a generation of free trade accords, and is the EU's first trade deal with an Asian country, according to the statement.

South Korea is the EU's tenth-largest partner for exports and the EU is South Korea's fourth-largest partner for exports. Endit