Brittan in new move to build EU-Asia trade

Date: 09/05/1996

By Elizabeth Wise

THE European Commission is continuing its push into the Asian markets this week as Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan leads a group of business executives to Japan to press for the regulatory changes necessary to ensure market openings are fully exploited.

The two-day visit which starts today (9 May) will focus on six sectors where EU experts “see new opportunities in the Japanese markets”, according to a senior Commission official.

The financial service sector (with the exception of insurance) tops the list, followed by telecoms and semi-conductors. The other sectors targeted by EU officials are food processing, the manufacture of electrical appliances and medical equipment.

Brittan and the 20 business leaders accompanying him will meet their counterparts in Tokyo, as well as having talks with Japanese government officials.

“We are going to check out with industry and government to see just how great these opportunities are,” said a Commission official.

The meetings are part of Brittan's two-year-old strategy to build a large network of EU-Japan contacts both inside government and out.

His belief that the soft-sell approach is more effective in Tokyo than the US method of demanding specific trade targets and threatening sanctions has been reinforced by the fact that the Union's trade deficit with Japan has been shrinking since mid-1994 while Washington's has risen.

But Union officials say they want European firms to be part of the US-Japanese business dialogue, forming trilateral partnerships, particularly in terms of investment.

“What is happening with Japan is an intensification of our relations,” said a Brittan aide. “We want our contacts not to revolve only around trade problems, but rather to deal with Japan as a partner.”

But he said the Commission's emphasis on Japan would start to decline, albeit slowly vis-à-vis other Asian nations, where Europeans see burgeoning trade opportunities.

Brittan's two days in Japan followed a four-day visit to China. In meetings with Prime Minister Li Peng and Foreign Minister Qian Quichen to discuss Beijing's membership application to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Brittan also raised questions over EU access to China's vast market and the government's failure to protect intellectual property rights.

In addition, the Commissioner established training for Chinese workers in the field of intellectual property, one of four EU-China cooperation programmes. The others include technical and trade cooperation in the dairy sector and cooperation between universities.