The European Union and Singapore should complete talks on a free trade agreement in a few months and implement the pact by the end of 2011, aiming to double trade within five years, a top EU negotiator said Wednesday. The trade pact would eliminate several hundred million dollars a year in EU tariffs that Singapore companies currently pay, Chief EU Negotiator Rupert Schlegelmilch said. «We're still discussing technical issues like rules of origin and tariff and services liberalization,» Schlegelmilch said at a news conference in Singapore. «But on all these chapters we're very advanced,» he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
