The visit to Tokyo of European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström on Friday 30 June and Saturday 1 July has cleared the path for an agreement in principle between the EU and Japan. There are hopes of this agreement in principle coming about at a bilateral summit in Brussels on 6 July (ahead of the G20 summit in Hamburg on 7-8 July), in order to seal the EU-Japan free trade negotiations which were launched in 2013.
"An agreement in principle between the EU and Japan is within reach. We are hopeful, we are confident, we are not yet certain", a spokesperson for the Commission stated.
"We are nearly there. I am quite certain our leaders will be able to agree on a draft and give it their blessing when they come together on 6 July, on the sidelines of the G20 summit", Malmström assured on Saturday evening, after two days of decisive negotiations conducted alongside European Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan and European chief negotiator Mauro Petriccione with Japan's head of diplomacy Fimio Kishida and Japanese negotiators. "The objective is to reach a final agreement by the end of the autumn", Malmström stated.
The expected agreement in principle would involve market access, while on certain technical issues such as investment protection and the settlement of investor-state disputes, the parties would take more time after the summer holiday, Malmström said.
"The draft we hope to conclude will remove nearly all customs duties and this accounts for billions of euro", she said, adding that there were hopes that Europe's agricultural exports to Japan would be tripled, and that total exports to this country would increase by a third.
The EU-Japan free trade agreement, which has become known by the acronym JEFTA (Japan-EU free trade agreement), would cover nearly a third of global GDP and 36.8% of global free trade. “This agreement would have huge economic importance. What is more, it would send a strong signal to the rest of the world about the fact that the EU and Japan believe in free trade and do not think that we should build walls or increase protectionism”, Malmström stated, in a thinly veiled reference to Donald Trump’s US protectionist policy. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)