The European Council on Friday welcomed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.'s push to pursue a free trade agreement with the trade bloc and boost the country's Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus or GSP+ accreditation.

Malacañang – through the Office of the Press Secretary — disclosed that the EC expressed its willingness to work together with the Philippines through the renewal of the country's GSP+ status.

The GSP+ is a unilateral trade arrangement that offers zero tariffs on 6,274 products or 66 percent of all EU tariff lines.

The OPS added that Marcos met with EC president Ursula Von der Leyen on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-European Union commemorative summit in Brussels, where the Philippine leader stated his intention to expand talks on the FTA between the Philippines and the EU as well as the renewal of the country's GSP+ status.

For the council's part, Von der Leyen said the GSP+ "would open the door for a much easier start into going into free trade agreement negotiations."

"Let's work on it," Von der Leyer told Marcos, referring to discussions on the country's bid to renew its GSP+ status.

In his remarks at the Philippines-EU business roundtable recently, Marcos stressed that the Philippines is "the only ASEAN country to benefit from the EU GSP Plus."

In 2012, out of 140 beneficiaries, the Philippines was the 20th largest user of this scheme. In June of the same year, the EU announced that the Philippines was included in the list of countries eligible to apply for the revised GSP+ program for 2014-2023.

As a condition for the GSP+ status, a country is expected to effectively implement 27 international core conventions on labor rights, human rights, good governance, and the environment.

"While the Philippines awaits the resumption of the PH-EU Free Trade Agreement negotiations, we remain committed to maintaining our EU GSP+ beneficiary status, serving as a stepping-stone towards this FTA," the President told European business leaders at one business roundtable in Belgium.

"We also have an FTA with the European Free Trade Association namely, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, and Liechtenstein, which provides the Philippines duty-free market access to all industrial and fisheries products to the Member States," he added.

The negotiations for the EU-Philippines FTA started in 2016 while the last round of negotiations was held in Cebu City in 2017. Since then, negotiations have been on hiatus.

In February 2022, 627 members of the EU Parliament urged the European Commission to temporarily withdraw the Philippines' GSP+ status if the government of then-President Rodrigo Duterte will not swiftly comply with its human rights obligation.