The European Commission will next month bid to kick-start trade negotiations with India and Korea in a move that gives renewed hope to City law firms keen to break into their markets.

The commission is to ask the Council of Ministers for a negotiating mandate on bilateral free-trade agreements with India, Korea and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).


The move comes in the wake of the collapse of multilateral liberalisation talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Legal services are likely to feature in the negotiations with India and Korea, although it is more uncertain in relation to ASEAN, despite calls from lawyers that they should be included.


The bilateral agreements would have the same aim as the WTO talks, meaning that, if successful, City firms would be able to open offices in India and Korea. Their lawyers would also be allowed to conduct fly in/fly out work. There has already been much work done by bodies such as the Law Society on persuading both to open up, with a Chancery Lane delegation in Korea this week to attend a seminar on legal services sponsored by government body UK Trade & Investment.


Law Society President Fiona Woolf said: 'The EU's proposal to start negotiating free-trade agreements with India and Korea will give the Law Society new leverage to persuade these countries to open their legal services markets. Both are in the top five markets that solicitors' firms want to see liberalised and the talks could in both cases be concluded within a couple of years.'


The Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), which represents lawyers at an EU level, would prefer a purely multilateral approach, according to secretary-general Jonathan Goldsmith, but it recognises 'the many pressures and difficulties in that'. Bilateral negotiations are the only alternative and he said the CCBE has begun such talks of its own, with a mutual recognition agreement with the US top of the agenda.


Pursuing bilateral deals at the expense of multilateralism is controversial, but EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson argued last month that there was no conflict. He said bilateral agreements allow countries 'to road-test liberalisation that can ultimately be extended to the global system'. He added: 'Doha has not stalled because of bilateral trade agreements, and bilateral trade agreements need not be fatal to its success.'


Speaking recently to the Gazette, WTO director-general Pascal Lamy said such deals had their limits under WTO rules. 'I don't believe that bilateral negotiations should be seen as the only way forward,' he continued, 'but rather as a complement to progress in the multilateral arena.'