EU-Japan Agreements: Content, Context and Implications

Abstract

The article analyses the agreements concluded by the EU with Japan: Economic Partnership Agreement, Strategic Partnership Agreementand the negotiated agreement: Investment Protection Agreement. EPA liberalizes trade in goods and services. By setting the legal framework for a strategic partnership, SPA facilitates cooperation against common challenges. IPA will regulate standards for investment protection and disputes resolution. The analysis consists: – the content of the Agreements; – socio-economic and political potential of the parties; – EU’s legal powers to negotiate and conclude agreements, and its competence, whether exclusive or shared, to enter into these Agreements; – the importance of Agreements for their parties and for other international actors as well as for regional, trans-regional and global relations. The thesis of the study is the statement that in a world where instability is increasing and security is reduced, the parties are fulfilling their, as real great powers, obligation to bear special responsibility for the implementation of the values represented. The Agreements confirm the community of values on which they are embedded and create conditions for strengthening these values. The study consists of five parts. First we analyse the subject matter of the Agreements , then their actors, and the reasons of concluding them and why. In part IV \we explain the importance of the Agreements for the contracting parties and for the international community, and in part V we concentrate on the Agreements as seen from the external perspective. The conclusions state that the Agreements institutionalise security communitywhere the security and defence policy component is still relatively weak, but is also being developed. The agreements making closer political and economic ties between the UE and Japan open the way to creation of the EU’s security community with “democratic diamonds” in the Asia–Pacific region.