15e EU-Japan topontmoeting (en)

The 15th Summit between the European Union (EU) and Japan will be held in Tokyo on 24 April 2006.

Alongside European Commission President José Manuel Durao Barroso i and European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner i, the EU will be represented by Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel and High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana i.

Discussions will cover political and economic aspects of the EU-Japan relationship, global issues, in particular energy, as well as a range of key international issues including East Asian regional cooperation, relations with China, the Korean Peninsula, Russia, Iran and the Middle East.

President Barroso said: "This is an important opportunity to further develop our strategic partnership with Japan. I want to take our relationship to the next level. In particular we can further intensifiy our political cooperation, ensure that our economic relationship remains dynamic and address a number of outstanding bilateral issues."

Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner said: "Japan and the EU are both major economies, democracies and growing players on the world stage. Our co operation - as aid donors from Iraq to the Balkans, as partners in tackling climate change, and increasingly, as major energy consumers - is ever more wide-ranging, and working together, we make a real difference".

The EU and Japan are strengthening their relationship through the implementation of a Joint Action Plan, with four key objectives: promoting peace and security, enhancing trade, working together to tackle global challenges and the bringing together of people and cultures. Recent progress towards the objectives of the Action Plan includes the adoption of the Investment Framework to foster growth in two-way direct investment in 2004, the joint participation in the scientific ITER project (on the feasibility and desirability of fusion as a large scale source of energy) in 2005 and the signing of a Japan-Euratom agreement this year.

The 2005 Summit decided to hold an EU-Japan Symposium with stakeholders in the different fields of cooperation to develop ideas for new forward looking initiatives. This Symposium was held in Brussels on 6/7 April with the participation of over 130 academics, business people, journalists, NGO representatives and government officials from Europe and Japan. The results of this discussion will be presented to summit leaders.

The European Commission wants to see vigorous implementation of the Action Plan continue, including in the fields of customs co-operation and science & technology co-operation where negotiations on bilateral agreements are close to being finalised.

The EU appreciates its existing co operation with Japan on a range of international issues including the Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, and hopes to strengthen political co-operation further. As democracies, which share the same values and believe in the rule of law, human rights and sustainable economic development, there is a lot of potential to more widely project our joint interests and ideas on a global scale.

Together Japan and the EU account for 40% of global GDP and are both major global aid donors. When the EU and Japan work together they are listened to. Closer collaboration between the two sides could make an important contribution to the success of the Doha Development Agenda negotiations and help to prepare the multilateral regime to combat global warming that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

For further information on the EU and Japan:

http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/japan/intro/index.htm