As part of the 2017 Embassy Day Asia-Pacific (an event under the framework of the Asia-Pacific Weeks Berlin), the Embassy of Malaysia, together with other ASEAN embassies organized a seminar “ASEAN@50: Moving to the Future” at Palais am Festungsgraben, Berlin on 16 May 2017. Present to open the seminar was the President of APFB, Prof. Gert Bruche, who delivered a short keynote that touched on ASEAN’s future as single market.
The event featured 3 presentations, the first of which was Ambassador of the Philippines and Chairperson of the Berlin ASEAN Committee, H.E. Melita Sta Maria-Thomeczek, delivered a presentation on ASEAN. Thereafter, Deputy Governor for Industry, Trade and Transportation of Jakarta, Prof. Dr. Ir. Sutanto Soehodho, delivered a presentation titled “Smart Cities”, which highlights initiatives that have been taken in making Jakarta a smart city. The third speaker, Executive Director of Export Development Council at the Department of Trade and Industry of the Philippines Mr. Senen M. Perlada, presented on the topic “Doing Business in Free Trade Area”.
H.E. Ambassador participated in the interactive dialogue session after the presentations. He spoke on a number of issues in response to questions/remarks by some of the Seminar participants, which includes the progress of free trade agreement between EU and ASEAN, the impact of China’s “one belt, one road” initiative towards ASEAN, and ASEAN’s free trade outlook following the withdrawal of the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.