04 August 2014 – Philippine Ambassador to Poland Patricia Ann V. Paez chaired the meeting of the ASEAN Committee in Warsaw (ACW) on July 31 where a consensus was reached to partner with Poland’s top think tanks, namely the Center for International Studies and THINKTANK to increase awareness about ASEAN in Warsaw, especially in view of the establishment of an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015.
The ACW, composed of the all the ambassadors of ASEAN member-countreies with Embassies in Warsaw, agreed to forge this collaboration during the ACW meeting with Dr. Malgorzata Bonikowska and Dr. Pawel Rabiej of the Center for International Studies and THINKTANK.
Ambassador Paez gave a brief overview of ASEAN-EU relations for which Vietnam is the present country coordinator. She said that the EU became a full Dialogue Partner of the ASEAN in 1980 and it acceded to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in 2012. The envoy added that today the total trade between ASEAN and the EU amounts to US$234.8 billion and that the EU is the 3rd largest trading partner of ASEAN. Ambassador Paez also said that the EU’s foreign direct investments (FDIs) to ASEAN amounts to US$ 18.2 billion and that the European bloc accounts for 16% of all FDIs in Southeast Asia.
A video on ASEAN entitled “One Vision, One Identity, One Community” was shown and brochures on ASEAN entitled “A Sharing and Caring Community” were distributed during the meeting. Both materials were provided by the DFA’s Office of ASEAN Affairs to the Philippine Embassy in Warsaw.
The members of the ACW are: Malaysian Ambassador Jamaluddin Bin Sabeh, Thai Ambassador Bansarn Bunnag, Vietnamese Ambassador Pham Kien Thet, and Indonesian Charge d’Affairs Bambang Prihartadi.
At the beginning of the meeting, Ambassador Paez requested everyone to offer a one minute silent prayer to the victims of the MH17 for which the Malaysian ambassador expressed his appreciation. END