President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is eyeing ten bilateral meetings during the ASEAN-EU Commemorative Summit in Belgium next week.

This was confirmed by Assistant Foreign Affairs Secretary Daniel Espiritu in a press briefing on Friday.

"We also expect to hold around ten bilateral meetings on the side with ten countries," he said.

Espiritu said these include the call on King Phillippe of Belgium and heads of states of Estonia, Czech Republic, Spain and Denmark.

"He will call on the King of Belgium and this is important because we will be marking the 76th year of the diplomatic relations between the Philippines and Belgium. And at the same time, this intends to expand cooperation between this country, our country, and Belgium in terms of agricultural cooperation and renewable energy," he said.

Espiritu said Marcos will meet with Unilever for a possible construction of a new manufacturing facility for personal care products in Cavite.

"This is for expansion of investments to the tune of P4.7 billion. Now it is expected to generate at least 130 projected employment for the Philippines," Espiritu said.

During the bilateral meeting Marcos may discuss cyber cooperation and a pending extradition treaty with Estonia, said Espiritu.

The bilateral meeting with the Czech Republic is important because of

defense cooperation and proposed technology transfers, added Espiritu.

Espiritu also noted the importance of the bilateral meetings with Spain, "which will be the EU Council President of the second half of next year, in 2023" and Denmark, "with which we will also celebrate the 75th year of bilateral cooperation".

"Spain has just acceded to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation of ASEAN. It was supposed to be signed during the last summit but it was delayed, but the signing will come. Then we have defense cooperation with Spain also from which we also purchased some heavy-lift air transports," he said.

"Denmark is important because we have maritime cooperation with Denmark as well as shipbuilding cooperation. In fact there is a shipbuilding facility in Cebu, Austal Philippines recently produced passenger ferry for the Philippines, from Cebu," he added.

Espiritu said other bilateral meetings will be held with Germany, Poland, Finland, The Netherlands and of course the European Union.

"With the European Union, it’s important because they are our partner as co-coordinators in the ASEAN-EU Commemorative Summit. So, they will discuss the preparations and the way forward for ASEAN-EU relations as well as Philippines-EU relations including the way forward for a pending Philippine-EU Free Trade Agreement," he said.

Marcos will also have a meeting with the Filipino community on December 12. Robina Asido/DMS