The European Union’s bilateral relations with Qatar have developed “very positively” in the past two years, Timo Hammaren, deputy head of unit, DG Trade at European Commission, said yesterday at the Qatar Trade Summit 2021.
According to Hammaren, EU-Qatar bilateral trade “has risen steadily” since 2016 to reach a record level of “€17bn” in 2019 in terms of trading goods. In parallel, both countries have witnessed “an increasing trend in trading services that reached “€6.8bn” in 2019.
“The Covid-19 pandemic brought down our bilateral trade volumes last year as it did with basically all of our major trading partners. But this is a temporary drop and we're mending this as we speak. The trade figures are already coming up this year,” he pointed out.
He said, “While the foreign direct investment flows to Qatar have suffered during the past few years, I'm happy to note that our bilateral FDI stocks remain strong with Qatar, which has invested a total investment stock of ‘€32bn’ in the EU, and the EU having ‘€7.4bn’ in Qatar, corresponding roughly to ‘one quarter’ of all FDI in Qatar.”
Hammaren also said this is not the only reason for positive developments in EU-Qatar economic relations. In 2018, Qatar and EU signed a bilateral co-operation arrangement during the official visit of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to Brussels, he said.
“This co-operation arrangement aims at providing a framework to extend views on issues of common interest, ranging from security and counterterrorism to economic co-operation. The latter has focused on trade facilitation, investment education, academic mobility, and space co-operation.
“These issues are discussed in principle annually in the format of the senior officials meetings and I had the pleasure of co-chairing the first such meeting on economic issues back in 2019 with the Qatari government, and I look forward to coming back to Qatar yet this year for the second round of such meeting,” he said, adding that “further sign of this increased engagement with Qatar is that we are shortly expected to open the diplomatic mission to the State of Qatar.”
Hammaren added: “On bilateral relations with Qatar, I remain very optimistic. Our trade and investment flows are on a positive track and we have a lot of common interests in our trade strategies in terms of digitalisation and ‘greening’ of our economies, willingness to iron out any bilateral trade irritants, and cooperation in energy and transport sectors – all of these issues will be discussed in our next senior officials meeting taking place soon.
“As an example of one area of co-operation, just last month, we signed an EU-Qatar bilateral air transport agreement, which is important in view of the fast-growing number of passengers between the EU and Qatar; we reached more than 6mn passengers in 2019.”
According to Hammaren, EU-Qatar bilateral trade “has risen steadily” since 2016 to reach a record level of “€17bn” in 2019 in terms of trading goods. In parallel, both countries have witnessed “an increasing trend in trading services that reached “€6.8bn” in 2019.
“The Covid-19 pandemic brought down our bilateral trade volumes last year as it did with basically all of our major trading partners. But this is a temporary drop and we're mending this as we speak. The trade figures are already coming up this year,” he pointed out.
He said, “While the foreign direct investment flows to Qatar have suffered during the past few years, I'm happy to note that our bilateral FDI stocks remain strong with Qatar, which has invested a total investment stock of ‘€32bn’ in the EU, and the EU having ‘€7.4bn’ in Qatar, corresponding roughly to ‘one quarter’ of all FDI in Qatar.”
Hammaren also said this is not the only reason for positive developments in EU-Qatar economic relations. In 2018, Qatar and EU signed a bilateral co-operation arrangement during the official visit of His Highness the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to Brussels, he said.
“This co-operation arrangement aims at providing a framework to extend views on issues of common interest, ranging from security and counterterrorism to economic co-operation. The latter has focused on trade facilitation, investment education, academic mobility, and space co-operation.
“These issues are discussed in principle annually in the format of the senior officials meetings and I had the pleasure of co-chairing the first such meeting on economic issues back in 2019 with the Qatari government, and I look forward to coming back to Qatar yet this year for the second round of such meeting,” he said, adding that “further sign of this increased engagement with Qatar is that we are shortly expected to open the diplomatic mission to the State of Qatar.”
Hammaren added: “On bilateral relations with Qatar, I remain very optimistic. Our trade and investment flows are on a positive track and we have a lot of common interests in our trade strategies in terms of digitalisation and ‘greening’ of our economies, willingness to iron out any bilateral trade irritants, and cooperation in energy and transport sectors – all of these issues will be discussed in our next senior officials meeting taking place soon.
“As an example of one area of co-operation, just last month, we signed an EU-Qatar bilateral air transport agreement, which is important in view of the fast-growing number of passengers between the EU and Qatar; we reached more than 6mn passengers in 2019.”
