The first digital version of the European Business Council White Paper named Together Toward A More Sustainable Future is now online.
The European Business Council (EBC) has published a new White Paper every year for the past 20 Years, but from this year the White Paper has moved online.
Instead of printing a White Paper once a year, the digital White Paper will allow the EBC to always present readers the most updated issues and recommendations. It will also provide us with the possibility to better follow an issue over time, to add changes, and to keep issues that have been resolved. In previous years, issues that had been resolved were removed from the White Paper to make space for more pressing issues.
The digital White Paper will make it easier for our readers to find what they are more interested in. Tags will be attached to each issue, such as “urgent,” “resolved,” the “year” and the “committee” that is covering this issue. There is also an option to print out the issues.
2021 has continued to be a year of change. COVID-19 is still here, although we might start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Will this mean that we will be back to pre-COVID times? We believe that the resounding answer to that is no. We have seen that the way we work has changed. Today, remote working and web meetings are the norm, and while we are confident that we will have more physical interactions soon, some of the changes will be permanent.
The EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement has now entered its third year. It continues to provide improvements, both thanks to agreed points that are only later implemented, such as tariff reductions, and perhaps more noteworthy, the inclusion of previously not included non-tariff measures. We have already seen some improvements in this area, for instance public procurements for offshore wind, and the EBC continues to inform the EU Delegation of issues that are of interest to the European industry in Japan.
The EBC work is made possible by the continuing support of its stakeholders, especially the European national Chambers of Commerce, their corporate members that join the EBC and other business organisations represented in Japan. Together with the Delegation of the European Union to Japan and the European national embassies in Tokyo, who keep offering their unique insights and guidance, we all work towards making European business more successful in Japan.
The White Paper is the result of the EBC 22 committees’ work on barriers to trade between Europe and Japan. If your company is facing such issues and wishes to bring them up at government level with the EBC, you can join one of the EBC committees here.