President Ma Ying-jeou met on the afternoon of March 4 with a delegation led by Austrian parliamentarian Werner Amon, a member of the Austria-Taiwan Friendship Group (Österreich-Taiwan Freundschaft Gruppe). In addition to extending a cordial welcome to the visitors, the president expressed hope for strengthened interaction and cooperation between the two countries, thereby enabling bilateral relations to continue to move forward.
In remarks, the president stated that over the past year Taiwan and Austria have made significant progress, cooperating in the areas of pharmaceutical safety, technology research, academia, arts, and culture. He also recalled that First Lady Chow Mei-ching (周美青) last year accompanied the Ju Percussion Group on a trip to Austria to perform there, and was deeply impressed.
The president commented that last year Taiwan and Austria signed a youth working holiday agreement, which formally took effect on January 26 of this year. This made Austria the eighth European nation with which the ROC maintains such an agreement, following Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland, and the thirteenth country worldwide. The president believes that the agreement will help foster friendship among youth in Austria and Taiwan.
President Ma remarked that Taiwan and Austria also have a close cooperative relationship in economics and trade, with bilateral trade last year tallied at over US$800 million, which was a rise of nearly US$100 million from 2013. The two countries last year also signed an agreement for the avoidance of double taxation, which will help boost bilateral trade and investment. President Ma took this opportunity to express his gratitude to Parliamentarian Amon for his full support in including this legislation on the parliamentary agenda and ensuring its passage.
The president then addressed the ROC's active efforts in participating in regional economic integration, noting that Taiwan and New Zealand signed the ANZTEC economic cooperation agreement in July 2013, followed by the signing of the ASTEP economic partnership agreement with Singapore in November of that year. These developments are a concrete expression of Taiwan's sincerity and determination in promoting trade liberalization, he said. The government is currently striving to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and also hopes to commence negotiations with the European Union at an early juncture on a bilateral investment agreement and economic cooperation agreement. President Ma hopes that the parliamentarians in attendance today will continue to support Taiwan's efforts in this regard.
As for cross-strait relations, President Ma said that since taking office in 2008, he has consistently sought, under the framework of the ROC Constitution, to maintain the status quo of "no unification, no independence, no use of force" in the Taiwan Strait. It has also strived to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait ties under the "1992 Consensus," whereby each side acknowledges the existence of "one China" but maintains its own interpretation of what that means, and the principle of "putting Taiwan first for the benefit of the people."
President Ma furthermore stated that over the past nearly seven years the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have signed 21 agreements, creating the greatest level of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait in the past 66 years. Last year nearly four million mainland Chinese visited Taiwan, and the number of discrete visits to Taiwan by mainlanders over the past six years has reached about 14 million. Meanwhile, when he took office only some 800 mainland Chinese students had come to Taiwan to study, but that number has increased to over 32,000 today. These statistics show that cross-strait relations are warming gradually and that sustainable peace is no longer an unattainable goal, he said.
With respect to peace in the East China Sea, President Ma told the visitors that the ROC and Japan in April 2013 signed a fisheries agreement, thereby using peaceful means to resolve a fishing dispute that had lasted over 40 years. In addition, in May 2013 personnel on a Philippine Coast Guard vessel fired at a Taiwanese fishing boat, killing a fisherman and damaging the boat. The governments of the two nations subsequently held talks and reached a consensus to refrain from using force in law enforcement actions, to notify each other prior to such actions, and promptly release detained fishing vessels and crews in case of arrest. This, the president said, has effectively reduced disputes between the two sides.
President Ma went on to say that the Taiwan-Japan fisheries agreement and the three points of consensus reached between Taiwan and the Philippines both came subsequent to the East China Sea Peace Initiative that he unveiled in August 2012, the basic spirit of which is that "although sovereignty over national territory cannot be compromised, natural resources can be shared." Presently, the number of fishing disputes in the two areas has been effectively reduced, while the catches by fishermen have increased significantly. These developments have benefited fishermen, and been applauded in the international community. The president also expressed his hope that the spirit of the East China Sea Peace Initiative can be extended to the South China Sea.
Also in the delegation were parliamentarian and Committee on Science Chair Andreas F. Karlsboeck, and Social Democratic Party of Austria spokesperson for art and cultural affairs MP Elisabeth Hakel. The group was accompanied to the Presidential Office to meet with President Ma by Austrian Office Taipei Director Albin Mauritz, and Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Vanessa Yea-Ping Shih (史亞平).