Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-06-11-Speech-1-025-000"
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"en.20120611.18.1-025-000"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, thank you for this opportunity to speak on our trade relations with Japan.
In the weeks to come, the Commission intends to submit draft negotiating directives to the Council and start discussions on the content of a mandate. So this is a moment to seize and I hope we will have your support.
What I told the Council recently, and would like to reiterate here today, is that we are now confronted with a very important decision on the future of our relations with Japan: namely, whether we move towards free trade negotiations with one of our main economic partners or we freeze these relations for several years to come.
My view is that, based on the scoping exercise we have just completed, we are now in a position to move ahead with the next steps and should move to open negotiations. The ground has been fully prepared. First, we have an upfront agreement with Japan on what both sides expect from the negotiations. This scoping paper, which lays out the scope of our potential discussions, is the most ambitious that we have agreed in all of our trade negotiations. Therefore, we have the comfort that all our priorities will be addressed in future negotiations.
Second, regulatory barriers are the most important problem for European trade and investment in Japan. As a result, we have negotiated – again upfront – a dedicated package which addresses the key issues. We have already found satisfactory solutions for barriers in the car, foodstuff and pharmaceutical sectors. For a number of others, I will admit that some uncertainty remains.
Clearly, a failure by Japan to deliver on these barriers would have a very negative impact on any negotiations. Europe could not conclude an agreement if that were the case. But this political reality should be backed up with legal force and that is why the Commission’s proposal for the negotiating directives includes a provision clearly stating that if Japan has not delivered on its non-tariff road maps within a year from the start of the negotiations, the negotiations will be stopped.
This would oblige us to take stock of the situation one year from the start of the negotiations and, as mentioned, if progress were not satisfactory, we would simply call off the discussions.
I would also like to highlight another important principle that we have agreed with Japan: we have accepted that the phasing out of tariffs can only take place strictly in parallel with the elimination of regulatory barriers and according to mutually agreed timetables. That means that Europe will not commit to dismantling tariffs before Japan delivers concrete results on regulatory barriers, including those for the car sector.
Third, the thorniest issue we faced in our discussions with Japan was on public procurement in the railways sector. Here, I am pleased to say we have secured a good compromise. Japan has agreed to take effective measures in the context of the negotiations to open up its railways and urban transport market to EU suppliers.
I want to highlight, as I have done before in this House, that trade liberalisation remains the cheapest way we have to stimulate our economy. Ninety per cent of world growth will happen in the markets outside the EU in the future. Europe needs to be a big player in those markets if we are to return to prosperity. Considering its future weight in the world economy, we have a broad strategy for getting better access to Asia in particular. This agreement is a key piece in that puzzle. I would ask you to bear that in mind."@en1
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