Press Releases

On Wednesday, July 19, for approximately 15 minutes from 2:10 p.m., Prime Minister Shinzo Abe received a courtesy call from the EU-Japan Business Round Table (BRT) Co-Chairman Kazuo Tsukuda (Senior Executive Adviser of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.) and the Representative of the BRT Co-Chairman Danny Risberg (Chairman of the European Business Council in Japan (EBC)). The summary of the meeting is as follows.

1. At the beginning of the meeting, the representative for the BRT Co-Chairman Danny Risberg handed Prime Minister Abe a set of Joint Recommendations to the Governments of Japan and the EU, which was adopted at the BRT Annual Meeting of this year .
2. Subsequently, BRT Co-Chairman Tsukuda introduced the discussions at the BRT Annual Meeting  of this year and mentioned that the industry welcomes achieving agreement in principle of the Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and producing the joint declaration on the cross-border transfer of personal data during the 24th Japan-EU Summit Meeting held on July 6.
3. The representative for the BRT Co-Chairman Risberg stated that BRT has been strongly supporting the Japan-EU EPA and expressed his expectation for the early finalization of the negotiations.
4. Finally, Prime Minister Abe stated that the agreement in principle of the Japan-EU   EPA sent a strong message that Japan and the EU lead the world by keeping high the flag of free trade and that the Japanese government continues to made utmost efforts for the early signature and entry into force of the EPA Agreement. He also expressed his gratitude for consolidating the needs into the BRT Recommendation, and stated that he would like to bring about the growth of both Japan and the EU through the Japan-EU EPA, which is a main pillar for the growth strategy of the Abe administration.