"Check against delivery"

Dear Yamaguchi Daihyô,

Dear State Minister Tsuge,

Ambassadors,

Dear Friends and Partners,

I am delighted to welcome you together with my fellow European Ambassadors and Ambassador Korsunsky to our annual celebration of the European Union and the EU in Japan.

Seventy-four years ago, then French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman presented Europe – utterly destroyed by war – with a vision for a peaceful and prosperous future. It was a vision based on forgiveness and promise. A belief that even after such dark times, forgiveness was possible; and that a promise for a better future can act as a strong catalyst for peace.

From this extraordinary conviction, which should give pause to many of us today, the EU has grown into a democratic Union of 27 Member States, a Single Market of almost 450 million people; a community of diverse histories, cultures, languages, and customs.

On 1 May this year, we celebrated the 20^th anniversary of our most ambitious enlargement, which successfully welcomed 10 new countries into the Union.  Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia followed. Today the enlargement process is more important than ever, with accession negotiations opened with Ukraine and Moldova and ongoing with our partners in the Western Balkans.

Less than a month from today, on 6 through 9 June, citizens across the EU will participate in elections not for national legislatures, but for the European Parliament.

However, these and other success of the EU project have not stopped the eventual return of war to Europe: the illegal and brutal Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

While waged on European soil, it is a war emblematic of the greater challenges faced by the international community today: a return of great power politics and the systemic weakening of the international order based on the rule of law.

It is a war, the results of which will determine the fate of countries from the shores of the Atlantic to the lands and seas of the Indo-Pacific. It is a war, therefore, that Ukraine and the EU cannot win without the support of global partners such as Japan.

This year is a special year in EU-Japan relations and for this Delegation in particular. In 2024, we celebrate the 50^th anniversary of EU’s diplomatic presence in Japan.

As Head of the EU Delegation to Japan, I am humbled and proud to acknowledge the crucial role the Delegation has played over the past half-century. Our tasks and level of activity have grown with the EU’s evolution, and as is the case in Europe and across the globe, we work not only as an EU Delegation, but as part of a 28-member ‘Team Europe’.

The Delegation has paved the way for the EU and Japan to slowly grow to know each other, and from there to respect each other; and – finally – to successfully partner with each other.

This five-decade-long path has brought us to a place where Japan is our closest strategic partner in the Indo-Pacific region today. More so, as the rules-based international order faces existential challenges, as bombs are falling on a fractured world, I believe that today the EU and Japan are partners that need each other more than ever.

“When faced with a crisis, you need a firefighter, as well as an architect,” Jacques Delors, the celebrated ex-President of the European Commission once said. Faced with a war in Ukraine, a fragmented world and numerous other challenges across the globe, the EU remains grateful and proud to find Japan standing side-by-side with us as firefighters as well as architects with a shared vision for change.

Be it on the climate or environmental crisis or the deep digital transformation of our societies and economies, the EU and Japan are teaming up, reaching out to many partners around the world to design the solutions for our future. These will be on display, in the EU Pavilion and in the very many pavilions of the EU Member States at the World Expo 2025 in Osaka.

The diplomatic work conducted daily by the EU Delegation in Japan will continue and grow to meet the increasing demands of this critical and thriving partnership.  For this, I would like to thank my dedicated and hard-working team at the Delegation as well as my fellow Ambassadors and all other members of Team Europe.

Allow me to also to use this opportunity to thank all of you – our partners, colleagues, supporters and friends – in these efforts.

To the next 50 years!

Happy Europe Day!

Delegation of the European Union to Japan, 2024