South Korea and the European Union plan to set the final text of their ambitious free trade deal next week, paving the way for eventual implementation, officials said Thursday.
The so called "initialing" will be carried out in Brussels by South Korean Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon and EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton on Oct. 15, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a release.
Establishing the text of the 1,000 page agreement means it can then be officially translated from English _ the working language of the negotiations _ into Korean and the 23 official languages of the EU, said Lee Hye-min, South Korea's deputy minister for trade and chief negotiator for free trade agreements.
The agreement cannot be officially signed, however, until it is approved by South Korea's Cabinet and president and ministers from the EU's 27-member states.
South Korea's National Assembly must also ratify the signed agreement. The EU parliament must also give its approval, said Xavier Coget, in charge of economic and trade issues for the EU in Seoul.
"It's an important step," Coget said of the initialing as it clears the way for the translations to be carried out. "The text is stabilized."
South Korea's Lee said he hopes the agreement can be signed sometime during the first three months of next year.
The two sides began negotiations in May 2007. Formal negotiations concluded this summer and the agreement went through a "legal scrubbing" to prepare for the initialing.
South Korea and the EU did $98.4 billion in trade last year and officials hope the deal will spur a jump in commercial activity between the two sides.
British Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, who served as EU trade commissioner at the start of the negotiations with South Korea, said Wednesday in Seoul that the accord will eventually remove 97 percent _ or almost 32 billion euros ($47.3 billion) _ of the tariffs on annual trade between South Korea and the EU.
South Korea, which is aggressively pursuing free trade deals, reached an accord with the United States in 2007 to slash tariffs and other barriers, but the deal has languished in political limbo in both countries and remains unratified.
