News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Friday, April 25, 2025
The EU and Japan are expected to announce they have concluded four-year-old free trade negotiations at a summit in Brussels attended by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday (6 June 2017) in Brussels. They also plan to make a bigger point about free trade. The draft joint declaration, which …
Updated on 26 June 2017 13:11 CET European and Japanese negotiators have worked the whole week-end in Tokyo to try and clinch what they call a “broad agreement”, in other words the general outline of a free trade agreement the technicalities of which would be left for negotiators to finalise …
After having brought the Transpacific Partnership to bed in early 2016 as lead negotiator for Tokyo, Ambassador Koji Tsuruoka was sent to London to be Japan’s top representative in Britain. At a recent conference of trade lawyers at the prestigious university King’s College, the Japanese envoy spoke his mind on …
G7 nations are meeting in Taormina, Sicily, amidst high political tensions between the US and European countries, in particular Germany. Common ground on trade will be difficult to find. The EU and Japan are trying to advance their own free trade agenda in parallel. The trade tensions with the US are likely to …
A group of 15 EU member states has called on the EU Commission to step up efforts to draw up a common position that secures free cross border data flows in free trade agreements. The move comes at a time when the EU is finalising its four year old …
The European Commission is raising expectations that the EU Japan free trade agreement will bring significant reductions in ‘non tariff’ barriers to European exports. Brussels and Tokyo have been working intensely to reach the final stretches of what is now a four-year free trade agreement negotiation that has seen various ups and …
The EU and Japan are trying to finalise their almost four year old free trade agreement negotiations. Both sides had hoped to do so in late 2016 but have found it difficult to bridge final gaps. A visit by Japan’s Prime Minister in Brussels is expected to give a final …
Japan is not yet ready to open duty-free quotas on imports of dairy to the EU, nor is it happy with what it has gathered of the EU’s e-commerce chapter plans related to digital data flows. One week ahead of a bilateral meeting between the leadership in Brussels and …
EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström and Japan’s foreign minister Fumio Kishida held a meeting in Bonn, Germany, today, taking stock of ongoing free trade agreement talks as these appear to have stumbled. As previously reported by us, the more than three-year old trade negotiations with Japan have stuttered in …
After a substantial acceleration of free trade negotiations between the EU and Japan, raising hopes a pact could be concluded in the early months of 2017, momentum has petered out. With a bilateral United States – Japan trade agreement to potentially replace the Transpacific Partnership which Japan signed with …
