The EU is likely to give the go-ahead Monday to the talks and Seoul will hold a meeting of trade-related ministers this week before giving the green light for the negotiations, they said.

“When the EU completes the approval procedures on Monday as scheduled, the opening round of talks will take place here on May 7-11,” an unidentified government official told Yonhap news agency.

“During the first sitting, we will mainly discuss the timetable and methods for the talks,” the official said.

South Korea will put together a delegation of some 50 people covering four areas — commodities, investment and services, regulations and trade disputes.

Trade experts here say Seoul will find negotiations with the EU less tough than those with the United States as the EU is known to be more lenient towards its partners’ sensitive agricultural issues.

The benefits to South Korea from a free trade agreement (FTA) would be tangible as the EU’s average current tariff rate for imported goods is 4.3 percent, compared to the U.S. rate, which hovers at just over three percent.

South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun said last week that Seoul was ready to open talks with the EU on an FTA next month.

Speaking after a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi here, Roh said they “shared a common understanding of the enormous economic effects” such an agreement would have. After 10 months of tough bargaining, Seoul early this month sealed a free trade pact with Washington that scraps tariffs on thousands of items and will boost commerce by billions of dollars a year.

The negotiations sparked emotional protests, during which a taxi driver set himself ablaze.

South Korea, Asia’s third-largest economy, has been holding preliminary talks with the EU for about a year. Two-way annual trade is worth US$71 billion compared to US$78 billion between Seoul and Washington.

The state-funded Korea Institute for International Economic Policy has forecast that an agreement with the EU would help South Korea expand gross domestic product by more than two percent in the short term.

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