ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter reviews the likely impact and significance of the two agreements between Japan and the EU signed in July 2018, which represent a watershed moment in a long history of growing relations. On the one hand, the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) levelled the playing field for businesses in Japan and the EU, which for decades had been plagued by high sectoral tariffs, and which had to face a complex web of non-tariff impediments, particularly in Japan. On the other, the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) formalised and structured their growing interests in addressing non-economic issues of mutual significance, and codified further their expressed desires to play a more significant global role in the face of major existential challenges and changing geostrategic alliances. This conclusion aims to evaluate both the path-dependent trajectory of the EU–Japan relationship over the past two decades, and to analyse the significance of its underlying normative foundations. In so doing, it evaluates the ways in which historical documents and experiences have been inscribed into the fabric of the EPA and SPA, and assesses the ways in which EU–Japan relations both herald and reflect normative transformations across the world today.
