BRUSSELS: Taiwan and the European Union (EU) have set sights on cooperating in online intellectual property rights (IPR) protection, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua said Friday. Wang, who has just completed a Taiwan-EU economic and trade consultation conference in Brussels, said that EU officials attending the meeting have praised Taiwan’s achievements in IPR protection and expressed hope that both sides will forge closer cooperation in online IPR protection at a time when the Internet is playing a bigger role in people’s daily life.
During the meeting, the EU officials said that due to Taiwan’s efforts in IPR protection, many European firms feel comfortable investing in the Taiwan market, Wang said. She said that since the EU has been impressed by Taiwan’s IPR protection efforts, the European bloc has agreed to hold a bilateral consultation conference on IPR protection with Taipei once a year, compared with a frequency of twice a year in the past. The Taiwanese official said that the EU wants to work with Taiwan to carry out raids on cyber IPR violations in the future, in a bid to provide enterprises with better protection.
In addition to the online IPR protection issue, the economic and trade consultation meeting also addressed the possibility for Taiwan and the EU to cooperate in a wide range of industries, such as offshore wind power development, smart machinery production and the circular economy, Wang said. The last item refers to an industrial economy which promotes greater resource productivity in order to reduce waste, avoid pollution and boost energy efficiency.
Wang said that Taiwan has been gearing up to develop its offshore wind power industry and as a result several European industrial giants, including Siemens of Germany, DONG Energy of Denmark and France’s Eolfi have expressed the willingness to invest in that sector in Taiwan. As for the circular economy, Wang said, the EU sees the emerging industry as the one with a great potential to grow and sees Taiwan as developing a downstream, mid-stream and upstream supply chain for the sector. Both sides are looking forward to working together in the future, Wang said.
Meanwhile, the EU has expressed concerns that Taiwan’s quarantine process for agriculture and livestock product imports takes too much time and hoped Taiwanese authorities will streamline the process, according to Wang. Wang added that the MOEA will inform the Council of Agriculture and the Ministry of Health and Welfare of the EU’s concerns.
