Statement by President von der Leyen at the joint press conference with President Michel following the EU-Japan Summit via videoconference

Thank you very much, good morning,

Indeed, we had a very productive EU i-Japan Summit. Japan is a like-minded partner of the European Union and we have made good progress in our partnership. There is still a lot to be done but we went through each of the topics, and there is a lot of cooperation that we are working on to increase the common agenda.

Indeed, the first point on our common agenda was climate, the fight against climate change. And here, Japan is one of the first countries that has committed to climate neutrality in 2050, it was last fall. They are, like the European Union, very committed to the long-term goals. I very much welcome that. It will be interesting to see the goal defined by Japan by 2030. And we want to work much closer on this topic together.

That is why we indeed started the first ever Green Alliance with Japan. And there is a whole agenda that is in this Green Alliance, in the green transition. We want to inspire others to join, of course, and therefore, this Green Alliance is also so important in the run-up to the COP15 on biodiversity in Kunming and the COP26 on climate in Glasgow. Because we really need to move, to form this movement towards tangible, reliable goals we put for ourselves out there to fight climate change and to fight the loss of biodiversity.

There are a few topics or examples of the Green Alliance. For example, that we shape global standards or that we both push forward sustainable finance, like green bonds, and that we are firm on carbon pricing. But we also see an enormous potential in cooperating in the Green Alliance, for example on clean energy. We will be signing a Memorandum of Cooperation on hydrogen with Japan in the second half of this year. This paves the way, but there are also other topics, like the offshore wind energy, to work there closely together. All this was part of our discussions in this Summit.

On bilateral trade, another topic, here the cornerstone is the Economic Partnership Agreement. It has joint priority and we have to implement it fully. We will focus on delivering concrete benefits in non-tariff areas, and on clarifying the free flow of data under our Agreement, for instance. And we will continue working on market access within this Economic Partnership Agreement for EU agricultural products and on the remaining sanitary and phytosanitary issues that have to be resolved.

On multilateral trade, we share absolutely the views on the necessity to reform the WTO. And, as we are very happy that the U.S., with President Biden, is back at the negotiation table, we should now use the momentum mainly to develop new multilateral rules and to unlock the dispute settlement mechanism. Here, we agreed that we will push together for really having a concrete result in the Ministerial Conference of the WTO in the second half of the year.

On digital, Japan is our oldest and closest partner in the digital field. And, once more, here too we share the same vision of human-centric digitisation. So we want to build a partnership for the Digital Decade with Japan. We are investing in connectivity. We can work together on standards - for example on the ethical use of artificial intelligence. We will promote, as I have said, the digital trade flows through resilient supply chains and secure cyberspace, just to name a few examples of this potential.

And fifth, my last point, we also discussed the global fight against the pandemic. Both the European Union and Japan have made significant contributions to COVAX to ensure access to vaccines for all. The European Union will continue to support the efforts to fight the pandemic, including by exporting vaccines. Here, there was a very clear question from our Japanese partners.

It is a sign of solidarity and a sign of friendship with Japan that so far the European Union has authorised more than 100 million doses to be exported to Japan. That is approximately enough to vaccinate 40% of the population. And this reflects the very strong bonds between the European Union and Japan.

Thanks a lot.