Brussels, 28/04/2010 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday 28 April 2010 at the nineteenth EU-Japan Summit, European and Japanese leaders were unable to find a sufficient meeting of minds to be able to launch official talks this year on a new bilateral deal on business and trade relations between the two trading partners to replace the 2001 Action Plan that runs out in 2011. The President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and their host, Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama simply announced on Wednesday that they were setting up a high-ranking group to examine bilateral trade and investment relations in order to draft tangible proposals ahead of a possible free trade agreement. The members of the group were not specified. It would work for six months on business and trade relations between the EU and Japan and would submit proposals for an EU-Japan Summit in Brussels next year. Yukio Hatoyama said he hoped an economic partnership agreement would be one possible option. The EU and Japan have not be able to agree on a free trade deal because of disagreements over customs duty and non-tariff trade barriers. Tokyo is calling for customs duty to be abolished for Japanese cars and flat-screen televisions exported to the EU, and Brussels is calling for Japan to reduce its safety standards for EU products (especially cars) and its public tender rules and to speed up the controls of medical equipment. Barroso said it was vital as far as the EU was concerned to strike a balance and some of the EU-Japan trade disputes were over regulatory issues. In a public statement published shortly before the summit, Van Rompuy said that non-tariff barriers 'cause hesitance from the EU side to go ahead' (sic). (E.H. trans fl)