Industrial collaboration

Committee:
Defence & Security
status:
No progress
Published:
The EBC notices that dialogues and agreements between the European countries and Japan is ever flourishing. This is something that the EBC both supports and views as very positive. However, unfortunately this close cooperation between our authorities is not mirrored on the private side. Collaboration between European and Japanese companies in the defence area is still far and few. The increase in defence spending announced by Japan should be a catalyst to further industrial collaboration. The EBC would like to emphasise that collaboration would not only target the Japanese market, but also the European market and global market. We believe that this would be equally beneficial to the Japanese defence sector.

Recommendations

  • In order to foster cooperation between Japanese and European industries in the defense domain, especially with the view of addressing third country markets, the Government of Japan should continue to actively motivate Japanese companies to enter into a cooperative mode with their European counterparts.
  • The EBC recommends a closer dialog between the European Defense Agency (EDA) and its counterparts in Japan, ATLA (Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency) and METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), to promote industrial partnerships between Japanese and European companies. More specifically, Japanese officials could also explore and promote in a beneficial way, joining as a third party, the new defense initiatives implemented by the European Union to foster industrial cooperation between member states in specific areas of mutual interest.
  • The Government of Japan should also clarify its political policies regarding transfer to third-party countries and should either operate the three principles of defence equipment transfer in a more flexible way or revise them, to avoid their becoming an obstacle to cooperation between Japanese and European industries.