The European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed to take steps forward to resume talks for a region-to-region agreement, the bloc said Friday.

The two sides decided to start preparations to re-launch negotiations and committed to taking the lead together on regional and global trade, said a statement from the European Commission, the bloc's executive arm.

Negotiations on an EU-ASEAN trade agreement originally started back in 2007 but were separated into individual talks with ASEAN member states in 2009 as differences emerged in the level of economic development and openness in the bloc, the Commission said.

The EU's announcement came following a meeting between EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom and her ASEAN counterparts in Manila, where an ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) meeting was being held.

ASEAN as a whole stood as the EU's third largest trading partner after the United States and China. EU data showed that trade between the two sides had been 208 billion euros (221 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016 and the EU remained the largest external source of Foreign Direct Investment flows into ASEAN states in 2015 with 23.3 billion euros. (1 euro=1.06 U.S. dollars)

Source: Xinhua