A senior European Commission official says the South Korea-EU free trade agreement(FTA) is a win-win deal since it went into effect five years ago.
 
Jyrki Katainen, European Commission Vice President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness, gave the assessment in a speech during a South Korea-EU business forum held in Seoul on Thursday.
 
He said the trade deal brought about significant results in various regards, including improved competitiveness, expanded productivity and innovation. He also stressed that the accord provided a number of benefits to both producers and consumers.
 
Katainen said bilateral trade has climbed to an unprecedented figure and the use of each other’s goods also surged. 

According to the EU Delegation to South Korea, South Korean firms’ exports to the EU surged 32 percent since the adoption of the FTA. The percentage of the EU’s exports to South Korea as a percentage of South Korea’s total imports, meanwhile, grew from nine to 13 percent.
 
The volume of trade between the two sides reached 90 billion euros as of 2015, while traded goods surged 25 percent and trade in services jumped more than 30 percent.