merrion street

The Taoiseach is attending the 10th Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit in Milan today with other EU leaders, the European Commission and Council Presidents, together with Prime Ministers and Presidents from participating Asian countries. The Taoiseach  is accompanied at the summit by the Minister of State for European Affairs Dara Murphy.

Before travelling to the Summit the Taoiseach said:

Europe and Asia have many shared interests particularly in expanding trade and developing our economies as well as shared challenges – environmental change, threats to global security and the fight against poverty and hunger.

For many years Ireland has had strong partnerships within Europe and across the Atlantic. We are increasingly also looking to Asia where we export over €15 billion in goods and services and the value of our imports is close to €8 billion.

Asia is a key priority market for trade, tourism and investment and we are keen to work with Asian partners to identify opportunities where we can work together for mutual benefit.