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Introduction to Contemporary Japan–European Union (EU) Relations
Introduction
A momentous event with global impact occurred on 1 February 2019. On that day, tariff walls fell, as economies covering one-third of the world’s gross domestic product, and a total of around 639 million people, sought to establish a level playing field for mutual trade. It was the day when the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Japan and the European Union (EU) came into force.1 If you ever bought cheese or wine in Tokyo before February 2019, you would have blanched at the cost. But that date witnessed the eradication or the phasing out of tariffs, including the average fifteen per cent duties on European wine and the 29.8% tariff on cheeses like British cheddar. At the same time, exporters of Japanese shochu liquor, Kobe beef, and Yubari melon benefit from the removal of European barriers. Overall, the agreement will eventually underwrite the removal of ninety-seven per cent of Japanese tariffs on European products, and ninety-nine per cent of European products entering the Japanese market, eliminating almost all of the one billion euro per year paid out in duties by Europeans alone. For a number of products the changes will be introduced gradually. For example, after a seven-year staged introduction, the agreement opens important new opportunities for Japanese car manufacturers in Europe, as well as in services and public procurement for both sides. The European Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, heralded the historic agreement as follows: ‘This agreement has it all: it scraps tariffs and contributes to the global rulebook, whilst at the same time demonstrating to the world that we both remain convinced by the benefits of open trade.’2
Moreover, in addition to addressing trade barriers, this novel agreement includes a chapter on sustainable development, committing to the Paris Agreement addressing climate change and underpinning labour rights and environmental standards. According to Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, the deal ensures that Japan and the EU adhere to the ‘gold standard’ of labour, safety, climate, and consumer protection.3
Less well publicised is the fact that on the same day, a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) provisionally came into force between Japan and the EU, subject to ratification. The SPA underlines and advances political and sectoral cooperation between Japan and the EU and formulates areas for joint action, for example, in disaster management, energy security, and cybercrime. In so doing, it reiterates and serves to reinforce those principles and values common to Japan and the states of the EU, in terms of their primary global concerns in a rapidly changing world, particularly in response to new challenges presented by climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and new opportunities and threats from information technology. Together, these agreements represent the most significant step in a long history of relations between Japan and the EU, and to a large extent, build upon the incremental initiatives and mutual knowledge they accrued to that point.
The purpose of this book is twofold. First, it charts both the geopolitical context and bilateral historical steps which created the conditions and experiences upon which the EPA and SPA were based and negotiated. In so doing, it considers those principal international actors (notably the United States) that have been instrumental in influencing and shaping both Japanese and EU foreign policy, and the broader geostrategic events, actors, and issue areas which have affected their respective and mutual economic, security, and political policy decisions. In addressing the incremental growth in bilateral relations per se, the book then adopts a path-dependent approach to examine the ways in which decisions over institutional structures and the remit of the dialogue are made. Second, it charts the ways in which international norms have been embedded within the Japan–EU relationship, and how challenges and changes to those norms have been both resisted and embraced in the past two decades. At the heart of the normative foundation of this multifaceted Japan–EU dialogue has been a firm commitment to multilateralism, and this book examines whether current concerns expressed about multilateralism signal a global crisis, and whether and how the EU and Japan are responding to such concerns. Thus, with a specific focus on the ways in which Japan and the EU behave as global actors, the book also interrogates how democratic states face a contemporary assault on the liberal free-trading order and Western concepts of rights-based international relations.
A brief history
These agreements represent the culmination to date of an incrementally developing set of experiences and mutual comprehension among political and business leaders in Japan and the member states of the EU. While a ‘Japan–EU’ partnership is hardly in the news, and although the EPA itself barely reached the headlines in the world’s press, initiatives since the 1950s have slowly inched Japan and the EU towards greater mutual understanding and a desire to contribute jointly to various global and regional projects across a range of economic, political, and sectoral spheres of interest. At the same time, and in spite of early resistance to the idea of free trade agreements, the proliferation of such agreements elsewhere and the competition it engendered made their own decision to pursue a bilateral agreement irresistible.
During the post-war era, Japan and the states of Western Europe had very little to do with each other. Both were focused on US foreign policy: in Japan’s case, through the US–Japan Security Treaty, with US economic support, to the neglect of any attempts to build bridges with the rest of Asia; and in Europe’s case, benefiting from American economic assistance and investment to support its own region-building project in the form of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), and from close security integration through the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Notwithstanding a number of historically important ties, for example, between Japan and the United Kingdom (UK), and Japan and France, there was not an ongoing economic or security dialogue between Japan and the newly created European project during the 1950s and 1960s.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, Western Europeans were busy widening and deepening their Community, with an increase in membership from the original six of the ECSC in 1951 to nine by 1973, and through the accretion of Community-level competences. In fact, during the Kennedy Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, from 1964 to 1967) EC member states were already acting as a de facto group. During that decade, by now viewed as a growing economic powerhouse, Japan continued to lobby for greater international representation and questioned its ongoing commitment to the United States in light of the so-called Nixon shocks and the 1973 oil crisis. Very little interaction took place between them.
It was within such trade negotiations during the 1980s that Japan and the EU would enter into disputes over automobiles and semiconductors, resulting in the imposition of a range of voluntary export restraints (VERs) and the submission of anti-dumping cases against Japan within GATT structures. Japanese responses to European penalties in that later decade, precipitated by the Plaza Accord of 1985 (see Chapter 2), included the relocation of manufacturing sites to Europe. In turn, the EC was lobbied by European producers to take action against Japan’s dumping practices and against its so-called ‘screwdriver’ production (of importing Japanese parts to complete only final assembly on European soil). Subsequently, as the dust settled on the contentious decade of the 1980s, and as the 1990s witnessed a new post–Cold War and unsettled geopolitical environment, the GATT was transformed into the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the EU came fully into shape, both deepening and widening its reach.
Throughout these decades, global challenges and transformations, notably around the role of the United States and the ending of the Cold War, combined with a growing international presence for Japan and a greater consolidation of the European project, particularly as a result of the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, to enable Japan and the EU to build on their existing ties and to create in 1991 a more formalised set of structures for dialogue. It is on this foundation that contemporary relations then came to be built.
Understanding relations today
The aim of this book is to examine in detail how the EU and Japan reached this new stage in their relationship, to understand how the foundations of their contemporary relations are founded upon those original initiatives and structures, but influenced and (re)shaped by global, intraregional, and domestic norms and events, particularly since 2000. It draws attention to the three levels of contextual factors, bilateral institutional initiatives, and domestic and intraregional changes and challenges. First, as will be illustrated throughout the work, Japan and the EU have been profoundly influenced in their mutual relations by a number of contextual factors, and notably by their respective relationships with the United States. More recently, the growing influence of China has also had an impact on their bilateral cooperation. Contextual factors have, for example, influenced the ways in which both Japan and the EU have altered their views on free trade agreements, while changing views of what constitutes the most significant security threats have altered their room for influence. Thus, for example, while for many years their joint declarations would express support for international efforts to curb nuclear proliferation, the Japan–EU dialogue per se could offer no tangible contribution. In contrast, international efforts to address climate change, and energy security, can be complemented by bilateral initiatives covering the EU and Japan, and they can also seek to take a leadership role in these ‘new’ security realms. Other contextual factors include the ending of the Cold War, regional and global financial crises, and international terrorism. It is also against this background that the redrawing of the Western concept of multilateralism has been taking place, and a key question for this book is to understand the extent to which the foundations of such multilateralism have been shaken, and with what consequences for the EU and Japan.
Second, the book will also illustrate how the Japan–EU dialogue itself has accrued its own history and experiences, to the extent that it now re-creates patterns of familiar behaviour and acknowledges its own institutional heritage. This is important, as it allows us to correlate the ways in which decisions are based on prior experience, and to show how particular issues come to be highlighted. As the following sections in this chapter will show, the book adopts an institutionalist approach to path dependence in order to examine those historical events which have been designated to be significant by leaders of Japan and the EU themselves. It aims to show, moreover, that this historical trajectory embeds both structural as well as normative frames of reference.
Third, throughout the period of their bilateral history, the EU and Japan have undergone significant intraregional and domestic changes, respectively. As will be illustrated, for its part the EU has grown from its earliest form, which comprised six member states, to an international legal entity of twenty-eight states in 2019, with a remit covering economic, political, and security fields. Important for the evolution of the legal personality of the EU has been the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, which for t...
