The director general of European Union Centre in Taiwan (EUTW), Tzong-Ho Bau, led a delegation to Singapore from January 19th to 23rd for participating the two days’ Regional EU Centres’ Roundtable organized by the EU Centre in Singapore. Delegates from Taiwan for this important regional gathering on the EU studies includes deputy director general of EUTW, Hungdah Su and Francis Yi-Hua Kan, the executive director, Marc Cheng, as well as the directors from its consortium universities, director from National Chung Hsing University(NCHU), Hui-wan Cho, Tamkang University, Chiu-ching Kuo, and National Sun Yet San University (NSYSU), Lei Yang.
The topic of this Regional Roundtable was “Europe-Asia Strategic Partnership – Form and Substance”. Participants are from the EU Centres and relevant institutes in the Asia-Pacific region, including EU centre from New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. The Deputy Secretary General of ASEAN, the EU Ambassador and officers in Singapore, and several ambassadors and important European scholars from the European Countries were also invited to participant this significant event.
The deputy director general of EUTW, Hungdah Su, delivered his paper “CFSP after Lisbon Treaty – Implications for Asia” in the first panel and received many responses. The director general, Tzong-Ho Bau, was invited to chair the Panel III and upheld the discussion between European and Asian scholars on the issues related to “the Promise and Challenges of EU-Asia Partnership: Issues at Stake”. Francis Yi-Hua Kan, the deputy director general, and Cho-hui Wan, director from NCHU, also presented Taiwan’s perspective on various issues during the discussion and shared our intellectual outcome with the roundtable participants.
In addition to participate in the Roundtable, the delegates also actively interacted with the representatives from the EU Centres and relevant institutes, not only to exchange the research and viewpoints, also to establish a good foundation for initiatives on the future cooperation and communication with the regional EU studies communities.