Brussels / Tokyo, 25/01/2002 (Agence Europe) - In the framework of the visit he made to Tokyo last week (also see EUROPE of 23 January, p.11), European Commissioner Chris Patten hoped that the new Action Plan, which the Union and Japan provided themselves with in December, would give rise to "action on the ground" without delay, thereby confirming a relationship that has considerably flourished and improved in the space of a decade. The EU is closely monitoring progress in the economic reform and deregulation process in Japan, he said, while in Brussels, a Japanese delegation pointed to the cumbersome nature of European procedures, notably in the telecommunications sector.
Since its institutionalisation in 1991, "the relationship between the Union and Japan has developed, broadened and deepened to an extraordinary degree over these last years", whereas previously it was "largely dominated by trade disputes", the Commissioner was pleased to announce. Since then, he said after talks with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa, Foreign minister Makiko Tanaka and the Minister of the Economy, Takeo Hiranuma, the value of trade has increased to 160 billion euro, whereas European investments in Japan have exceeded those of the United States, as have Japan's in Europe. Japan has thus become the Union's foremost trading partner in Asia and their co-operation within international fora passed the test in Doha, notably in talks on agriculture and investment, he said, agreeing with his Japanese counterpart to push ahead with this team work.
For their part, the Japanese authorities handed Brussels their suggestions for regulatory reform within the Union, those of Europeans on the situation encountered in Japan being announced for the spring. At the bilateral meeting, held on Wednesday, the Japanese delegation, headed by Shinichi Kitajima, Director General of the Export Bureau of the Foreign Ministry, presented a weighty document setting out some forty "large" problems encountered by Japanese businessmen when conducting business on the European market. For the most part, these complaints are not new and "appeals for improvements have been repeated on many occasions" (see EUROPE of 23 February 2001), the Japanese officials point out, suggesting "specific solutions" this time for each point in the hope of finally being listened to. In the telecommunications sector, other than the lack of clarity over interconnection conditions and the high operating costs that in some cases are ten times higher than in Japan, Tokyo also fingers out the complexity and cumbersome nature of initial procedures that must be gone through to be able to export radiophone communications equipment, observing with some perplexity that to comply with European regulations, the equipment must be altered "so as to respect the European directive (R&TTE) but national regulations governing the allocation of frequencies in the different Member States are not unified". Furthermore, in a chapter devoted to the automobile sector, the Japanese are pleading for a rapid launch of the approval system - already applied to cars and motorbikes - for commercial vehicles and for close co-operation in drawing up international standards for the range of vision for drivers. They again here return to the difficulties encountered by their residents in Europe: Japanese driving licences that are not returned to their holders, the slow pace, the complexity and heterogeneity of procedures to obtain or renew living and working permits, etc.. Added to their concerns this year, if the draft directive relating to the Schengen Convention that the Union is invited to take all the time it takes to finalise, as the text "would have a significant impact of the Japanese travelling in Europe".