Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-06-11-Speech-1-037-000"
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"en.20120611.18.1-037-000"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in order to avoid any misunderstandings, I want to make clear right at the outset that good relations between the European Union and Japan are extremely important to my group and to me personally. Luckily, like the Member States of the European Union, Japan is a free democracy with human rights and a market economy. Sadly, there are all too few countries around the world where that is the case. That is why we need close contact with Japan.
It is also true, though, that we have been engaged in what is known as a high-level dialogue with Japan for years now, and it has produced no results whatsoever. Fascinatingly, the results of this were not that this high-level dialogue was to be taken to a successful conclusion, but the answer that Japan and the Commission came up with, instead, was to commence a ‘scoping exercise’ in respect of a free trade agreement.
A number of subjects have already been mentioned. The Commissioner, for instance, brought up the subject of the railways, which is an incredibly good example, because our market for public procurement in the railway sphere is as open as possible, and Japanese firms are able to compete. Yet we need to beg and scrape and do everything possible just to now obtain a very small degree of access to the Japanese market. This cannot be how this is supposed to work.
The same applies in the automotive sector, which Mr Lange has already addressed. Of course, the import figures into the European Union for Japanese vehicles are not much larger than our export figures into Japan. We must not, however, ignore the fact that the Japanese already have such good access to our markets in Europe that, as luck would have it, they produce 100 000 cars in Europe, while we do not produce so much as a single European car in Japan. This, too, shows that we need fair conditions before we enter into negotiations.
The next issue that is close to my heart that I want to raise is that I wish that we should not engage in never-ending negotiations. When we start negotiations, it must also be ensured that the Commission has enough resources to bring them to a prompt conclusion. We have been negotiating for years with over a dozen countries around the world on free trade agreements, but we have concluded hardly any of them. I would like to see the Commission investing sufficient personnel resources in order to achieve tangible results as regards the free trade agreement with Japan so that we do not negotiate for five or ten years only to find ourselves still without a result. I would like to see negotiations with a fixed schedule. I would like to see an agreement. I would like to see the negotiations concluded within one, two or, at the most, three years, before, unfortunately, we then in any case have to wait another year at the European end until we have the translations in place.
This, as it happens, is another subject which I would be very grateful if the Commissioner could bring up in the Commission at some point. I find it unsatisfactory for the European Union that it sometimes takes a year or more after the negotiations have been concluded before we finally have all the translations in Parliament. This is another area where the Commission needs a great deal more resources.
When it comes to the results, I would like to see negotiations commence with Japan. However, I would like us, Parliament, to first clarify what we want to say and for the Commission to then go all out to conclude such negotiations within a reasonable timeframe."@en1
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