THIS CONTENT HAS BEEN ARCHIVED

EU and Japan intensify bilateral cooperation on digital economy issues

20.04.2018
Teaser

EU News 78/2018

Text

The European Union (EU) and Japan this week continued their intense cooperation in the area of digital economy, with representatives of the European Commission and the EU Delegation to Japan holding a series of meetings with Japanese interlocutors from government as well as with the European and Japanese business communities. The Commission services involved were the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content, the Directorate-General for Trade, the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers. On the Japanese side, government ministries and bodies represented included the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), the Japan Patent Office, Japan Fair Trade Commission and the Personal Information Protection Commission.

The meetings included in particular the 7th EU-Japan ICT Strategies Workshop on 17 and 18 April, which allowed the different partners to exchange views and experiences on their respective digital strategies aimed at making a success of the transformation of our respective economies to the digital age. In particular participants from public authorities and industry looked into ways of working even more closely together in areas such as 5G, connected and automated driving, AI and robotics, electronic authentication, research and development in digital technologies, platform regulation, and the data economy and markets, data protection and privacy, as well as standardisation of digital products and services.

This intense and regular cooperation between the EU and Japan on the digital economy aims at achieving closer cooperation and must be seen in the wider context of the new opportunities for regulatory dialogue and cooperation that will be offered by the Economic Partnership Agreement agreed between the EU and Japan last year.

Both sides proposed to organise follow-up activities with a workshop on standardisation; explore participation in research, development and innovation programmes for the digital economy by the EU and Japan; deepen discussions on AI; and to focus the next 8th ICT strategies workshop notably on cybersecurity, blockchain and the data economy. These activities will report to the next EU-Japan Dialogues with MIC and METI that should be held towards the end of 2018 in Brussels.

Category
Press releases
Location

Tokyo

Editorial sections
Asia
Japan