The 6th round of the Korea-EU Free Trade Agreement negotiations was held in Seoul from January 28 to February 1. The Korean delegation was headed by Mr. Kim Han-soo, Deputy Minister for FTAs, while the EU delegation was led by Mr. Ignacio Garcia Bercero, Director of East Asia Bilateral Trade Relations at the European Commission.

At this round of negotiations, both sides made considerable progress by reaching an agreement in many fields, including dispute settlement mechanism, transparency, TDI(trade remedies), electronic commerce, competition and sustainable development. In the field of intellectual property, which has been one of the sticking points in the past negotiations, most outstanding issues were agreed other than the issue of geographical indication(GI). In a few areas including technical barriers to trade(TBT), sanitary and phytosanitary measures(SPS) and agreement on trade in goods, both sides have reached an agreement except on a few core issues, which need additional negotiations.

It was agreed by both sides that intersessional meeting be held to discuss further issues, such as rules of origin, non-tariff barriers to trade, and services and investment.

The next round of negotiations was tentatively agreed to be held in April this year, particularly focusing on the agenda items of tariff offer on goods, non-tariff barriers to trade of automobiles and rules of origin.