ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the origins and content of the 2018 Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Japan and the European Union (EU). The agreement is designed to create a tariff-free zone, by removing direct trade barriers on more than ninety-five per cent of goods traded between Japan and the EU member states; to remove long-standing contentious non-tariff barriers (NTBs); to boost trade in goods and services; and to create investment opportunities covering one-third of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP). The seven years of negotiations over the EPA involved multiple decision-making mechanisms and individuals, and saw the resolution of a number of complex challenges. The EPA built on a gradual history of mutual interaction between these growing international interlocutors, but, as the chapter shows, they continued to undergo domestic and intraregional transformations, respectively, even during this negotiating period, which impacted upon their decision-making structures and foreign policy preferences and objectives. The chapter also refers to the likely impact of the UK’s planned departure from the EU (‘Brexit’), whose conclusion at the time of the negotiations was foreseen for around the same time as the signature of the EPA itself.
