BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN – More than a decade after negotiations stalled, the European Union is keen to revive discussions with Brunei on a potential Partnership Cooperation Agreement.
Denis Chaibi, the EU Ambassador to Indonesia and Brunei, said the EU is “very open” to exploring opportunities to resuscitate negotiations and would be willing to recalibrate the text of the agreement to “better fit Bruneian sensitivities”.
“We’ve had limited cooperation over the last decade and it’s partly because negotiations for our Partnership and Cooperation Agreement were suspended in 2014,” he told The Scoop in a recent interview.
“Now that the multilateral order is under assault and the rules-based order is under retreat… We feel that cooperation with countries like Brunei — which is part of ASEAN and plays an active role in the multilateral order — are very important. So we want to really remedy these limited relations and move to a newer era where we cooperate more.”
A Partnership Cooperation Agreement (PCA) establishes a framework for political and economic cooperation between the 27 member states of the European Union and another sovereign nation.
Talks with Brunei were suspended in 2014 after the introduction of the Syariah Penal Code, which prompted a global backlash against the sultanate and condemnation from human rights groups. However, Brunei later guaranteed that the de facto moratorium on the death penalty would remain in place.
The ambassador said that initial fears of Brunei implementing punishments such as amputation and stoning have been put to rest.
“I think that the experience over the last decade has shown that even though Syariah law has been introduced as the sovereign decision of Brunei, its implementation in terms of what the EU perceives as human rights [concerns] has not raised difficulties with the EU,” Chaibi explained.
“We are willing to engage because we see the experience of the last 10 years as not being a hindrance to reviving the negotiations.”
With funding from the European Union, the EU-Brunei Darussalam Partnership Facility was established in 2022 to advance bilateral cooperation through policy dialogues, education, and people-to-people exchanges.
Chaibi said that the partnership facility is a “good vehicle” to scale-up engagement between the EU and Brunei by finding common ground on issues such as climate change, renewable energy, and digital transformation.
“We feel that precisely with this facility we show the commitment to reinvigorate our relations with Brunei and work together on issues of mutual interest.”
The envoy said the decision to reopen talks on the partnership agreement would ultimately depend on the wishes of Brunei government.
“I think that there’s a general and genuine openness to discuss the future of relations,” he said.
“We feel that it would be very useful to revive these negotiations and we feel that this commitment — this joint commitment to the rules-based order — can go a long way.”