2000–2010

In January 2000, Foreign Minister Yōhei Kōno, a consistent friend of Europe, outlined in a speech in Paris the proposal of a Japan–Europe Millennium Partnership. This resulted in a Joint Action Plan which in subsequent consultations almost inevitably was downsized by 990 years to a ‘decade of cooperation’ from 2001 to 2011. However, it was still a fairly ambitious Action Plan with dozens of worthy objectives ranging from a world free of weapons of mass destruction to intercultural dialogue, based inter alia on the exchanges of trainees and school twinning. No fewer than twenty-two different fora for sectorial dialogues were established and formalized, an edifice crowned by annual Summits. As befits harmonious bilateral relations, in the EU and Japan media interest for the ‘decade of cooperation’ and the state of EU–Japan relations was small compared to the earlier periods of trade frictions. ¹ In Japan, the only public concerns related to worries about the lifting of the EU arms embargo against China in 2005, and in Europe to Japanese barriers to EU investments – especially after EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson raised the matter in unambiguous terms during his visit to Tokyo in 2008. Later, during 2011, cooperation on access to rare earth metals and sizable Bank of Japan (BOJ) purchases of Eurobonds of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) triggered media interest on both sides. ² However, at the annual EU–Japan Summit in Tokyo in April 2010, the Summiteers (Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, joined by the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton and European Commissioner for Trade Karel De Gucht) declared 2010 to be the year of renewal and pledged to share undefined ‘best practices’ in reviving their economies.