By Olivia Le Poidevin
YAOUNDE, March 27 (Reuters) – The European Union and the parties to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership agreed on Friday to move forward with reaching a “historic” digital trade agreement between both trading blocs, Canada’s trade minister said.
“The concrete resolution from today’s conversation was: let’s move forward on digital trade agreement,” Maninder Sidhu, Canada’s Minister of International Trade told Reuters.
The EU and parties to the CPTPP – a trade agreement which comprises 12 countries, including Japan, Britain, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Malaysia – met on the sidelines of the WTO ministerial conference in Cameroon on Friday.
“If this comes together, as it hopefully will, this will be historic. It will be the largest trading agreement in civilization,” Sidhu said.
He said the coming together of the two blocs which together represent 1.6 billion people and $35 trillion economies would be significant.
The EU said in a statement that this agreement could serve as a blueprint “for a region-to-region track of work” in digital trade.
“An EU-CPTPP Digital Trade Agreement would be an enormous success. We need to accelerate, as DTAs represent a future-proof layer of trade agreements,” said a EU spokesperson.
The deal would look at e-commerce, data flows and storage, the minister said, adding that ministers will continue to engage in further conversations on what the deal could look like.
(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin in Yaounde; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
