Brussels, 31/01/2014 (Agence Europe) - European and Japanese negotiators have provided more detail on their respective proposals for the text of the future agreement.
Early in the week, the Commission said it hoped that the fourth round of talks, from 27 to 31 January, would make it possible to enter into the substance of the agreement and take forward preparations for a first exchange of offers. After this week of talks, the European Commission was pleased to announce that “negotiations are continuing”. “The two teams focused on further discussion and explaining each side's proposals for the text of the future agreement”, the Commission said on Friday, adding that discussions were held on every chapter of the agreement: trade in goods (including market access and general rules), technical barriers to trade and non-tariff measures, rules of origin, customs and trade facilitation, animal and plant health and hygiene, intellectual property, sustainable development, competition policy, and dispute settlement. Another group covering the other issues discussed general and regulatory cooperation, enterprise management, electronic trade and animal welfare.
“We need to keep up the pace and push on in a spirit of cooperation so that we can deliver a deal that will bring benefits to our citizens and help create jobs”, commented John Clancy, the spokesman for Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht. The next round of talks is scheduled to be held in Tokyo at the end of March.
Strict parallelism has been established in these talks between EU tariff liberalisation and Japan's lifting of non-tariff barriers. A review clause provides for an assessment to be made in spring 2014 of progress made by Tokyo on non-tariff barriers, entailing suspension of talks if progress is insufficient. (EH/transl.jl)