The Digital Economy Agreement Leadership (DEAL) Depository is an innovative, interactive platform that consolidates digital economy agreements (DEAs) and relevant free trade agreements (FTAs) signed by members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a political and economic union of 10 states in South-East Asia. The platform enables users to navigate and compare key provisions impacting the digital economy found in free trade agreements (FTAs) and digital economy agreements (DEAs). It is designed to facilitate comparative analysis, supporting the negotiators and stakeholders of the Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA), currently being negotiated among ASEAN members.
South-East Asia is one of the fastest-growing internet markets globally, expected to triple by 2030. At the same time, ASEAN countries face rising regulatory heterogeneity in the regulation of digital trade, which can impact productivity, innovation, and growth opportunities. The DEFA can contribute to regulatory harmonisation and interoperability among ASEAN countries. The DEAL depository is expected to contribute to this process. It does so by housing 22 DEAs and FTAs, highlighting the binding or hortatory nature of commitments and allowing users to select from 37 indicators, categorised into ten policy clusters, covering a wide range of digital trade topics. In addition to containing general information about the key agreements covering digital trade commitments, the platform enables detailed text comparisons and facilitates downloads of the compared texts for further analysis, thereby promoting data-driven policy-making and supporting ASEAN negotiators in developing effective strategies. As such, the depository represents a useful tool also for decision-makers, civil society organisations, and academics to compare and analyse commitments on a treaty-by-treaty and provision-by-provision basis.
This project was developed by the Digital Trade Integration (DTI) project team at the Robert Schuman Centre, led by Prof. Martina Ferracane, in partnership with the University of Lucerne. The Depository is part of the broader DEAL project under the Centre for Regions, Trade, and Geopolitics (CRTG) of the World Economic Forum, supported by the ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund and the ASEAN Secretariat.
Martina Ferracane is passionate about policymaking and technological innovation. She is a part-time Assistant Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre, where she leads the Digital Trade Integration project, a CIVICA and Horizon 2020-funded research project.