Joint initiatives key to taking relations forward

Date: 13/03/03

RELATIONS with the EU are in much better shape than they were two decades ago but there is still room for improvement, according to Japan's leading academic authority on the Union.

"Back in the 80s, trade issues like dumping dominated," recalls Professor Toshiro Tanaka of Keio University. "But things have improved remarkably since then."

Tanaka points to 1991, when the EU and Japan signed a declaration at The Hague to provide a framework for annual summits and trade development, as a turning point in the relationship.

(He's speaking before this week's row with Japan over car import tariffs in the EU.)

He highlights an initiative at the United Nations calling for the registration of small weapons and cooperation aimed at encouraging North Korea to use its nuclear plants for only peaceful purposes. (How successful the latter has been is very much open to question, of course). Japan has also worked closely with the EU in providing funding and know-how to help in the reconstruction of the Balkans.

Perhaps the biggest success has been in pushing through the Kyoto Protocol, covering the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. "Japan kept the protocol alive despite being under a lot of pressure from industry to withdraw," he says.

But the professor, who is president of the European Union Studies Association in Japan, admits his report is mixed.

A major disappointment concerns joint planning and evaluation of official development assistance to aid poor countries. "This has not resulted in the success we hoped for due to differences of opinion on how or where money should be spent," he says. However, Tanaka remains optimistic that the EU-Japan relationship will flourish. The advent of the euro has helped boost interest in Europe among politics students at Keio, whose alumni include Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and five members of his cabinet.

The university, Japan's oldest, has always had links with Europe, he points out. Its founder Yukichi Fukuzawa - familiar to all in Japan because his face appears on the 10,000-yen note - established a school for Dutch studies in Edo (now Tokyo) in 1858, before switching to English studies five years on.

Tanaka, who worked at the Japanese Mission in Brussels from 1985-87 and lectured at the European Union Institute in Florence in 1993-94, says he has a simple message for the Japanese government: "Don't underestimate the EU."

Were he still alive today, Fukuzawa would surely approve.

Relations with the EU are in much better shape than they were two decades ago but there is still room for improvement, according to Japan's leading academic authority on the European Union.