EFTA, Turkey Advance FTA Upgrade Talks

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

04 September 2017

Turkey and the European Free Trade Association (Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland) recently held the fifth round of negotiations towards updating their free trade agreement.

According to a statement from EFTA, the parties continued their discussions and made significant progress in respect of the update and expansion of the FTA during the round, which was held in Geneva from August 22-25.

Negotiations were held in several areas, most notably in trade in goods, including trade remedies; rules of origin and trade facilitation; trade in services; intellectual property rights; and legal and horizontal matters, including dispute settlement.

The parties agreed to hold the sixth round before the end of 2017, with intersessional discussions on various outstanding issues to be held in the meantime.

Bilateral trade between EFTA and Turkey has been increasing in recent years, reaching EUR6bn (USD7.1bn) in 2016.

EFTA's main exports to Turkey are precious metals, pharmaceutical products, machinery and mineral fuel. Merchandise imports from Turkey consist mainly of precious metals, apparel articles and accessories, and vehicles.

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