Written by: Maylany Ika Putri
Friday, 2 September 2016, Programme on European Studies UGM, in collaboration with International Relations Student Association (KOMAHI) and European Union Delegation to Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam hosted the annual seminar on Indonesia – European Union Bilateral Relations Update. The seminar took place in East Seminar Hall, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada. As many as 160 participants joined our seminar, which will be followed by the two-day event for high school student, International Relations English Competition (IREC).
The seminar, which aimed to enlighten the participants on how the relations between Indonesia and EU runs so far until the first semester of 2016, invited three distinguished speakers. They are Florian Witt (Political, Press, and Information Section of EU Delegation), Trisari Dyah Paramita (Deputy Director, Directorate of South America and the Caribbean Affairs, Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), and Muhadi Sugiono (Lecturer, Universitas Gadjah Mada), and Suci Lestari Yuana (Lecturer, UGM) as the moderator. They spoke mainly about three sectors of cooperation between those two entities: politics and law, economics and environment, as well as social and culture, respectively.
Q&A session.
In economics and trade sector, Indonesia has built quite strong relations so far. This bound is getting more solid since Indonesia and the EU has reached a joint commitment to start a formal negotiation on CEPA (Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement), following the green light given by the EU Commission upon the scoping papers for CEPA on 18 July 2016. Besides CEPA, Trisari also highlighted some issues about another form of Indonesia and EU relations in trade and economic sectors, such as Indonesia’s success in getting EU’s license on FLEGT-VPA (Forest Law Enforcement, Governance, and Trade – Voluntary Partnership Agreement), crude palm oil, Jokowi’s visit to Belgium, and some other current issues occurred in Europe.
Meanwhile, Florian Witt talked mainly about why an Indonesia and EU relation is very important and that both parties can be beneficiaries from their closer and wider cooperation. The first formal discussion on CEPA, which he said being scheduled on 19 September 2016, is a very strategic start for both relations on economic sector to gain more advantage from a more open and comprehensive cooperation. In political sector, Indonesia is always seen as a decent example of how Muslims can live peacefully along with non-Muslim community. This fact matters since Europe puts their concern seriously about the issue of Islamophobic in their homeland. Therefore, Indonesia and EU has started the Human Rights Dialogue since 2010 to address the issues that can threaten the security in both regions. From that dialogue, they arranged some more specific cooperation for de-radicalisation, counter-terrorism, as well as interfaith dialogue. These endeavours hopefully can be a proper bridge to foster the cooperation on countering the common issues faced by the government of Indonesia and the EU.
In social and cultural sector, Muhadi Sugiono delivered attractive information about scholarship opportunities to go to Europe through student exchange and pursuing bachelor until doctoral degree. The scheme of cooperation in education between Indonesia and European Union has been built long enough under Erasmus Mundus scholarship 2004 – 2013 and became Erasmus+ since 2014. And right now, the opportunity for ASEAN students to study in Europe is wider since the launch of EU SHARE scholarship. EU SHARE (EU Support to Higher Education in ASEAN Region) is a comprehensive scheme between EU and ASEAN to boost the Higher Education harmonisation process within the ASEAN region. Indonesia is also one of its beneficiaries, since there are four universities who participate in EU Share scholarship scheme: Universitas Indonesia, Universitas Diponegoro, Bogor Agricultural University, and Bina Nusantara University.
From right to left: Trisari Dyah Paramita, Florian Witt, Muhadi Sugiono, and Head of KOMAHI UGM, Kristian Oka.
Above all, the relations between Indonesia and the European Union until 2016 are showing a good chapter. The cooperation that has been done and currently under discussion is predicted to give a win-win solution for both parties in dealing with domestic issues as well as countering global threat together as equal partner, such as environmental degradation, terrorism, and migration.
Maylany Ika Putri is currently Project Officer for Programme on European Studies UGM. She was graduated in 2015 from Department of International Relations UGM. She can be reached via maylanyip13@gmail.com .