Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo on Thursday said ASEAN member states and China are all “politically committed” to having a binding Code of Conduct on the South China Sea by 2026.
“Everyone has agreed that we would like to have a code by 2026 but we have to agree,” Manalo told reporters in an ambush interview in Manila City.
Speaking at a maritime-security forum organized by the Philippine Navy in Manila, Manalo stressed the Philippines “remain committed to achieving substantive and effective code of conduct that would effectively govern the behavior of the parties at sea.” The Philippines will host the annual ASEAN summit in 2026.
He cautioned that sensitive issues — “such as the scope of the code and the nature of the code, and its relation to the declaration of the code principles adopted in 2022 in the South China Sea” — must be resolved by consensus.
“We hope and we will do all that we can to try and achieve a successful negotiation,” he added.
In a separate ambush interview, National Security Council spokesperson Assistant Director Jonathan Malaya described the COC talks as advancing at a “glacial pace.”
“Hopefully, by the time that the Philippines is chairman of the ASEAN, the code of conduct will be completed,” he said.
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. previously said he does not see “good faith” from Beijing in the ongoing negotiations.
Last year, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. urged ASEAN to hasten COC talks amid rising South China Sea tensions.
He noted that “core elements of the COC, such as the milestone issues of geographic scope, the relationship between the COC and DOC, and its legal nature to this day remain outstanding.”
“It is time that we tackle these milestone issues directly so we can make substantive progress moving forward,” Marcos said at the 27th ASEAN-China Summit in Laos.
The South China Sea faces overlapping claims from the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan. ASEAN and China agreed in 2002 to draft a COC, but formal talks only began in 2017 and have since proceeded slowly.
Earlier this month, Manila hosted the latest round, raising concerns over Beijing’s aggression in the West Philippine Sea — waters within the Philippines’ 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone. China claims nearly the entire sea, through which about $3 trillion in trade passes annually.