EU en Japan bespreken toekomst diplomatiek en economische samenwerking (en)

The EU and Japan will hold their nineteenth summit meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday, with talks due to focus on the future framework for political and economic relations between them.

The meeting will also be an excellent opportunity to identify specific areas for cooperation in fields such as trade and security, and to increase understanding of the EU in Japan and vice versa.

This is the first EU summit meeting to be held outside Europe since the Treaty of Lisbon came into force last year. The EU will be represented by the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, and the President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, while Japan will be represented by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, and the European Commissioner for Trade, Karel de Gucht, will also take part in the talks.

The EU's relationship with Japan rests upon both sides being advanced industrialised democracies that share many common interests and values. The scope of the overall relationship has broadened in recent years along the lines of the action plan adopted in 2001, and now goes far beyond the earlier trade-related focus of the 1970s and 1980s.

Cooperation today takes place at all levels up to the top-level EU-Japan annual summit meetings, and covers foreign policy, economic and trade relations and regional and global challenges.

Sector-based dialogue also takes place in various fields, such as the environment, information society, technology, industrial policy and financial services, and the two sides cooperate closely in international forums such as the United Nations, the WTO and the G8.

The summit being held in Tokyo could be the perfect occasion for the EU and Japan to “re-energise” their relations, according to the President of the European Council, at this time of “unprecedented change, when the world is becoming ever smaller and regions and countries as far away from each other as Europe and Japan see their destinies intertwined” .

During a speech he gave on Monday at the University of Kobe (Japan), Van Rompuy said the time was ripe for stimulating relations, because the EU and Japan uphold the same values and have the same kind of society:

"We are both adapting to a rapidly changing global world, to the shift from economic to political globalisation. As a consequence, both Europe and Japan need to be not only global economic actors, but also global political actors… It is of the utmost importance that our collaboration should reflect this new context".

Van Rompuy wants to see relations strengthened within four specific areas: trade, foreign policy, security and the environment, fields in which the EU and Japan, with their combined political and economic strength, can make a difference within an increasingly globalised world.