Indonesia-EU Bilateral Forum

Indonesia and the EU have a forum for regular consultation in the form of the Senior Officials Meetings (SOM) organised every year since March 2000. The latest European Commission-Indonesia Bilateral Consultative Forum meeting was held in Brussels on 10-11 December 2002, where both sides for the first time had discussions on recent political issues. Prior to that, the first two Forum meetings limited discussions to economic, commercial and development issues.

In the Third Forum meeting of December 2003, the Indonesian delegation was led by the Director General for European and American Affairs of the Foreign Ministry, Mr. Arizal Effendy. The head of the EC delegation, Mr. Fokion Fotiadis (Director for Asia, DG External Relations) reiterated that the dialogue has contributed significantly to the reinforcement of overall EU-Indonesia relations in political, economic and development cooperation.

The Indonesian delegation used the opportunity to praise the satisfactory progress of EC-Indonesia development cooperation and stressed the hope that the future would be directed to empower the economic activities of common and local people. Appreciation was expressed of the EC’s support of Indonesia’s quest for economic and political reforms.

On general and political issues, the two delegations exchanged the latest information on various issues of mutual interest. The Indonesian SOM leader briefed his counterparts on political developments, human rights and the judiciary in Indonesia. The EC delegation gave an up-to-date presentation of the status of the ongoing enlargement process and explained issues related to the European Convention and European security and defence policies. The Indonesian side also requested EC’s assistance to overcome problems encountered by Indonesians in their application for obtaining visas to visit European countries (Schengen area).

Discussions on economic and commercial issues and development cooperation were conducted in two separate working groups that followed. The meeting of the Economic and Commercial Working Group stressed the importance of making progress on a number of issues such as trade-related technical assistance and various bilateral trade concerns to further enhance trade and investment relations between Indonesia and the EU. The Development Working Group had extensive discussions on a wide range of regional and bilateral issues and exchanged information on various projects and programmes already funded or possibly to be funded by the EC.