I thank you very much for your question and I am happy that you share our aspiration to end the process of this important free trade agreement between us.
In Jordan, let me go back a little bit in history. His Majesty King Hussein ruled for over 40 years, and literally, he built Jordan. He built the new Jordan that we know.
His Majesty King Abdullah, when he acceded to the throne in 1999, was in a country where you have 70% of the population under the age of 30, so he started a set of reforms and he started a set of.... We know, as Jordan, we were partners to many international agreements. Many of them are in human rights, and in that area we boast that we are ahead of anybody else.
Then you have your international commitment, and at the same time you have to apply it within your government and within your country, so we started that process. It started about 2003, with what we called at the time our “national agenda”. The aim of the national agenda was to bring the international commitment closer to application in Jordan.
Doing that, at the same time we started our negotiations with the European Union. We have an association agreement between us. This association agreement has a meeting of the councils between Jordan and the EU every six months, and we work on a set plan of action. That plan of action covers many aspects. The three main subcommittees are the human rights subcommittee, the justice and peace subcommittee, and the subcommittee on social affairs.
On all those points that you mentioned about the labour laws, we have our international commitment and we have our application in Jordan. With our new laws, any labour in Jordan, be it foreign labour or domestic labour, is now covered within the Jordanian law. There is no exclusion and no different treatment.