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Why The Eu Fta / Epa Is Necessary

Decent Essays

The aim of this paper is to examine why the EU-Japan FTA/EPA is necessary. The European Union (EU) and Japan has been recognised as ‘natural strategic partnership’ with common interests or shared values over normal global partners (Atanassova-Cornelis, 2010: 479). Currently their relationship implicates a wider range of fields beyond trade; for instance, security, political, cultural and research cooperation; there are ongoing negotiations for Free Trade Agreement (FTA)/Economic partnership Agreement (EPA) and Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) between the EU and Japan (de Prado, 2014: 15; European Commission, 2015a). However, although both parties have had positive attitudes toward cooperation in multi-disciplines and economic dimension is predominant, the potential in trade and investment is not satisfied and underdeveloped, due to historical trade conflicts and trade share and intensity have tended to decline (Lambrecht and Pohl, 2013). The relationship between the EU and Japan has originated the EC-Japan trade from 1959; it has been changed in response to the changing world. Particularly, in the 1970s and 1980s, the world was in instability such as the Cold War and the idea of ‘Europessimism’ in Europe; both the EU and Japan had faced serious trade conflict between them and this caused political issues such as ‘Poitiers incident’ that French government imposed quota on Japanese VCRs into France; this period is classified as ‘confrontation’ and ‘friction’

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