According to Karel De Gutch, the European Commissioner for Trade, the EU and Singapore have completed negotiation of a bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA). When the FTA takes effect, Singapore will immediately exempt all European goods tariffs and tariffs on Singaporean goods imported into the EU will be ended within 5 years. In 2011, EU was the second biggest trade partner of Singapore, while Singapore ranked 13^th among Europe’s trade partners. Trade totaled 86.9 billion USD in 2011. The EU is now negotiating an FTA with Vietnam and Malaysia, and has started preliminary discussions of an FTA with ASEAN. Development level differences among ASEAN members make it difficult to create an FTA with common regulations for the bloc.