In a boost for global free trade, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and EU Presidents Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk yesterday signed the Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) to lay the ground work for the creation of an open trade zone covering over 600 million people. Also known as JEFTA, the deal has been long in the making, but was […]
eu-japan FTA
EU-Japan Trade Deal Lacks Digital Ambition
When the EU signed a free trade agreement with South Korea in 2010, it guaranteed protection against liability for Internet platforms – a key ingredient to maintaining Internet freedom. When the EU signed a free trade agreement with Japan last year, the guarantee against liability for Internet platforms was missing. Guarantees also were gone on the freedom of data flows […]
A Trade Deal for the 21st Century
On the eve of the G20 summit in Hamburg, the European Union and Japan reached a political understanding about a new comprehensive free trade agreement. During the EU-Japan Summit, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, hailed the agreement as “the birth of the world’s largest, free, industrialized economic zone.” EU officials proclaimed it “the most important bilateral trade agreement ever concluded […]
Understanding the EU-Japan Free Trade Agreement
Underway since 2013, it looks as if trade negotiations are coming to a close toward an EU-Japan Free Trade Agreement (FTA), as the European Union calls it, or Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), the term used by the Japanese side. This is important as together, the economies of Japan and Europe account for a third of global GDP. Moreover, the EU […]