Brussels, 14/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - European and Japanese leaders are to assess progress in the ongoing free-trade negotiations and in those for modernising political relations.
On 19 November, Tokyo will host the 21st bilateral EU-Japan summit at which President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will review work started by the EU and Japan at the end of March to modernise their bilateral relations through a strategic partnership agreement for political, economic and social cooperation. The leaders will also commit to giving fresh momentum to sectoral cooperation in the areas of energy, research and innovation, space, crisis management and development.
In addition, the discussions will focus on development in the negotiations for a free-trade agreement - after three rounds of talks. These negotiations were also launched in March. The third round, at the end of October, focused on assessing the proposals for the text of the agreement. The next round is planned for 2014. The parties have not yet gone on to exchange offers of market access for goods and services. This could come at the beginning of 2014. A strict parallelism has been drawn up between tariff liberalisation for the EU and lifting Japan's non-tariff barriers. A revision clause provides for an assessment of Japanese progress on non-tariff barriers in June 2014 and for negotiations to be suspended if this progress is not sufficient.
The big global challenges (global economic situation and G20, climate change, development, cyber-security and non-proliferation) are also on the agenda - as are regional security issues (Korean peninsula and East Asia) and international security issues (Egypt, Syria and Iran). (EH/transl.fl)