The Minister of Trade of Türkiye Ömer Bolat and the Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security; Interinstitutional Relations and Transparency Maroš Šefčovič met today in Ankara on the occasion of the second meeting of the High-Level Dialogue on Trade.
Türkiye, a candidate country and Customs Union partner, and the EU are major trade partners, with bilateral trade flows that have grown constantly over the years reaching €210 billion in 2024.
Türkiye-EU High-Level Trade Dialogue has become a valuable platform for guarding the good functioning of the Customs Union and guiding the future cooperation. The first meeting, held in Brussels on 8 July 2024, brought together public and private stakeholders and launched a constructive and forward-looking agenda.
In today's meeting, the Minister and the Commissioner first took stock of the good progress in the past year towards eliminating the barriers encountered in bilateral trade. They confirmed that on the basis of engagement and dialogue, Parties were able to jointly address barriers and yield positive and tangible results.
Another pillar of the meeting was to explore the ways of further cooperation in such key areas as green transition with a special focus on CBAM and circular economy, digital trade, business mobility, trade defence, customs cooperation, trade in organic products and public procurement.
Just as importantly, both sides exchanged their views to continue cooperation on the prevention of the circumvention of EU sanctions via the Customs Union and enhance collaboration in the context of the current geopolitical situation and find ways to work more closely.
Among the concrete deliverables of the meeting, both sides welcomed the substantial progress made on 3 out of 6 priority trade issues of EU side, namely on use of preferential quotas for beef meat, implementation of import controls under TAREKS and on surveillance by registration. Both sides agreed to maintain constructive engagement to resolve remaining concerns. There was an agreement on the updated rules of origin protocols in the EU-Türkiye Free Trade Agreements for ECSC and agricultural products to bring them in line with the revision of the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean (PEM) Convention on rules of origin. In addition, the legal procedures to put in place the acceptance by the EU of A.TR movement certificates issued electronically by Türkiye were concluded, as a deliverable of the previous HLD and the relevant decision of the EU-TR Customs Cooperation Committee has been published today (1st July) in the Official Journal of the EU. Parties also agreed to move ahead towards the finalisation of the decision on mutual recognition of respective Authorised Economic Operators' Programmes. Finally, Parties agreed to organise a working level dialogue on rules and practices in e-commerce.
The High-Level Dialogue on Trade takes place against the background of the EU's Joint Communication to the European Council on EU-Türkiye political, economic and trade relations (29 November 2023) and the European Council conclusions on Türkiye. It continues to serve as an important milestone towards better implementation of the Customs Union and paving the way for modernization which further support competitiveness and economic security on both sides.
