Related

Japan to drop operational safety clause for railways procurement: EPA negotiations

In the on-going negotiations between Japan and the EU, Japan has proposed to drop the operational safety clause for transportation. The clause was long seen by EU railway companies as a non-tariff barrier preventing them to do viable business in Japan.  

The proposal would force government entities such as Tokyo Metro, city transport organisations in designates cities, JR Hokkaido, JR Kyushu and JR Shikoku to tender large contracts under international public procurement rules.  The proposal is said to include a transitional period to ease its impact.

For the three largest JR companies, JR East, JR West and JR Tokai, scrapping the clause will make little difference as the EU ended its opposition to the exclusion of these privatised companies from the public procurement framework in the fall of last year.  As these three companies cover the majority of the public transport market in Japan, the impact of the proposal is regarded as limited, although some worries are expressed about price competition if more EU companies will take part. The impact is likely to decrease further as the Japanese government is also preparing privatisation more JR companies, with JR Kyushu scheduled to go to the market in two years.

 

Source: Kyodo (J) , Saga Shinbun (J)

EU-Japan Centre's News

More
Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) has pre-announced a call for applications for the 2024…
The Horizon Europe call for EU-Japan collaboration projects (Topic: HORIZON-JU-SNS-2024-STREAM-B-01…
The EU-Japan Centre’s office in Tokyo is regularly publishing "Industry and Policy News”. By…
The European Institute of Innovation & Technology invites you to apply to their one-of-a-kind,…
The EU-Japan Centre is pleased to start a new weekly service by publishing brief summary of the…

Events

More
Online and in Japan
17/06/2024 - 12/07/2024
17-21 June 2024, → mandatory week online (open to SMEs and large companies) 08-12 July 2024, → optional week in Japan (open only to SMEs who have completed the first online week) PROGRAMME…
Japan
01/08/2024 - 31/03/2025
  The organization of the Vulcanus Programme is pending reception of a grant by the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation for the Japanese fiscal year 2024-2025: Please note that this call is…
Subscribe to
our newsletters

The EU-Japan Centre currently produces 5 newsletters :

  • EU-Japan NEWS - our flagship newsletter covering the Centre's support services, information about EU (or Member States) - Japan cooperation
  • Japanese Industry and Policy News
  • “About Japan” e-News (Only available for EU companies / EU organisations)
  • Japan Tax and Public Procurement Weekly Tender Digest (Only available for EU companies / EU organisations)
  • Tech Transfer Helpdesk Newsletter
Subscribe