Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-06-11-Speech-1-044-000"
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"en.20120611.18.1-044-000"2
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"Mr President, Japan is the world’s third largest economy and an extremely important trading partner for us here in Europe. Trade between us is not without its complications, however. Having met with many European and Japanese companies, I think that the picture is pretty clear. The huge challenges faced by European companies in Japan consist of discriminatory bureaucracy and complicated procedures as well as a huge number of protectionist rules. Japanese companies, for their part, complain all the more about European duties.
I am therefore pleased that we are now, slowly but surely, getting close to initiating free trade negotiations, because this is precisely the tool to deal with both of these problems. Now that we have finished discussing the scope, we can also clearly see the benefits that we can expect from a free trade agreement. It is therefore important for us now to take the next step, for the Council to set a clear mandate for negotiations and for the Commission to initiate those negotiations.
As we have heard to a certain extent here in plenary today, however, there is opposition to these negotiations, but I think that it is rather interesting, because this opposition is somewhat different to the kind we usually see when we discuss free trade negotiations. It is not the usual kind of opposition relating to agricultural protectionism or talk of social or environmental dumping, and it is not north against south. Instead, it seems to be more difficult in this case as it is often economies that are similar to each other that need to come together.
It is a question of rules that have to be equal, and I do not believe that these negotiations will be easy. A number of us visited Japan to discuss the preconditions for a free trade agreement with Japanese representatives, and I must admit that I was not entirely convinced of their resolve and willingness to get to grips with the difficult decisions that need to be made precisely with regard to amending these discriminatory rules. This does not mean that we should not initiate negotiations, however. On the contrary, I believe that it is within the context of negotiations that we can exert the pressure that we need to exert in order to open up the Japanese market for European companies.
We need a free trade agreement. At the present time, when it is more popular than ever to talk about us needing reforms for growth, there is no other growth reform that could be as good and as effective as a free trade agreement. This is a reform that will not cost any money, but, unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of European leaders and representatives who do not recognise such a reform, despite the fact that it is staring them in the face. I therefore suggest that, as soon as possible, we propose that we enter into full negotiations with Japan concerning a free trade agreement."@en1
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