Handover of the BRT's 2025 Recommendations to EVP Séjourné

Brussels, 03 March 2025 - The BRT's Recommendations adopted at its 26th Annual Meeting were formally submitted to the European Commission. EC Executive Vice President Séjourné received them from Merck's Maike Asmussen and NEC's Mitsuhiro Murooka. Ambassador Aikawa from the Mission of Japan to the EU witnessed the handover.

(Left to right: Ambassador Aikawa, Mr Murooka, Ms Asmussen & EVP Séjourné)

For more details see the main BRT webpage and for social media reports on the meeting see the BRT 2025 Annual Meeting Cuttings webpage.

26th EU-Japan Business Round Table Annual Meeting - 12 February 2025 - "JAPAN & THE EU – GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP IN A CHANGING WORLD"

Tokyo, 12 February 2025 - The 26th Annual Meeting of the EU-Japan Business Round Table took place in Tokyo and online via Zoom. The meeting was co-chaired by Dr. Nobuhiro Endo (Executive Advisor, NEC Corporation) for the second time and by Dr. Belén Garijo (Chair of the Executive Board and CEO, Merck) for the first time. The list of 92 Members at the time of the meeting can be found here.

European Commission Director-General Jorna addresses the 2025 BRT Annual Meeting

Articles and social media posts about the meeting can be found on the 2025 annual meeting cuttings webpage.

The key discussion topics

The meeting featured opening greetings from the Japanese & EU Authorities; keynote speeches by Takayuki Kobayashi (Member of the House of Representatives) and Kerstin Jorna (Director-General, Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship & SMEs, European Commission); a panel discussion on Economic Security (Cybersecurity; Enhancing the resilience of supply chains; Export Controls & Sanctions; and Dual-Use Goods & Technologies); a panel discussion on Industrial Competitiveness (the Digital Transformation the Green Transformation; Investment and creating new leading markets; Promoting skills and workforce diversity; and Supporting SMEs, start-ups, and scale-ups); and discussion and adoption of the BRT's 2025 Working Party Reports and Joint Recommendations for 2025.

There was also a two-part discussion and '2025 & beyond' focussing first on innovations & best practice sharing and then on possible themes and priorities for the BRT for the future. The meeting concluded with speeches by the Ambassadors of Japan to the EU and of the EU to Japan.

Dr. Endo & Dr. Garijo - the BRT's co-Chairs

The agenda for the day and Joint Recommendations communiqué

The BRT's 2025 Recommendations... in English:

... in Japanese:

Presentations given during the meeting

Here are some of the presentations that were given during the meeting. Other ones will be added in due course. To view/download a presentation, please click on its title page to open the document.

From the "Themed Panel #1 – Economic Security"

From the "Themed Panel #2 – Industrial Competitiveness"

From the "Working Party" session

From the "Innovation & Best Practices" session

From left to right: Jean-Eric Paquet (Ambassador of the EU to Japan, Delegation of the EU to Japan); Kerstin Jorna (Director-General, DG GROW, European Commission); Belén Garijo (BRT Chair, EU-side and Chair of the Executive Board and CEO of Merck); Nobuhiro Endo (BRT Chair, Japan-side and Executive Advisor of NEC Corporation); Yoji Muto (Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, METI); Hideto Kawasaki (Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications, MIC) and Shige Watanabe (Deputy Director-General / Deputy Assistant Minister (Ambassador), Economic Affairs Bureau, MOFA)

Articles & social media posts about the annual meeting

Please see the 2025 annual meeting cuttings webpage for articles and posts about the meeting.

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