After 4 years of negotiations, EU and Japan have reached an agreement in principle on the main elements of an EU-Japan Economic Partnership agreement on July 6th. The agreement was likely accelerated by the G20 meeting the next day, in a move by both economic giants to show that the age of trade liberalization has not ended with the United States’ withdrawal from TTP in January.
Although still quite a bit of work will be needed to iron out tricky details, the agreement will hail a new era in EU-Japan relations. Government or public procurement (PP) has been one of the sticky issues in the negotiations until the last days of negotiations, and even called a deal-breaker by some.
What both parties have agreed upon with regard to PP was eagerly awaited. The final text of the agreement, including the chapter on public procurement has not yet been made publicly available, so we have try to piece together from various sources what has been settled upon. First indications are that there will be many questions about what the agreement will mean in practice for EU SMEs.
The European Commission in its factsheet on public procurement in the agreement states the following main results:
It is still too early to judge whether the EPA will give real opportunities to European SMEs in the Japanese public procurement market. European SMEs (and probably Japanese SMEs as well) would be helped with the following:
The EU-Japan Centre currently produces 5 newsletters :
Joint venture established in 1987 by the European Commission (DG GROW) and the Japanese Government (METI) for promoting all forms of industrial, trade and investment cooperation between the EU and Japan.
The EU-Japan Centre’s activities are subject to the allocation of a Grant Agreement by the European Commission for 2024-2026