Last week, the European Union (EU) and Japan ended a new round of negotiations for a free trade agreement. According to participants, progress was made but their is still a lot of work ahead regarding tariff and non-tariff barriers to conclude the pact this year.
After a week of work, negotiators from the EU and Japan ended the seventeenth round. "We made good progress at the technical level and several chapters are practically finalized", said EU sources.
Much work is still needed, they said, especially in key negotiation areas, such as tariffs, including agricultural and processed products; services, public procurement, non-tariff measures, and geographical indications.
"Only an agreement with a high level of ambition in those areas will be acceptable to us and provide real economic benefits to both the EU and Japan," said the European sources.
According to them, the goal is to maintain an intense pace of negotiations in the coming weeks and keep advancing, so as to reach an agreement by the end of the year, as stated by the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, and the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, in the last Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in July.
The EU and Japan have been negotiating this trade agreement since April 2013. The Japanese side has committed to remove their non-tariff barriers, i.e. legislation that may put barriers to trade or access to public tenders in Japan, including markets, rail or public transport.
Japan is the second largest trading partner of the EU in Asia after China. Together they account for more than a third of the world's gross domestic product (GDP).
This treaty could boost the European economy's GDP from 0.6% to 0.8% and create 400,000 new jobs, according to the European Commission.
Source: EFE