EU and Japan agree to work together to promote free trade and economic security

Leaders of the European Union and Japan launched an alliance Wednesday aimed at boosting economic cooperation, defending free trade and countering unfair trade practices as the two sides face growing challenges from the United States and China. The leaders also supported “a stable and predictable rules-based free and fair economic order,” and reaffirmed the importance of Japan-EU cooperation to uphold multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core, as well as with other multilateral cooperation efforts. Japan and the EU have been stepping up their security and defense cooperation amid growing global tensions and conflicts, including Russia’s war on Ukraine, conflicts in the Middle East and increasingly assertive China’s military activity in Asia, recognizing that challenges in Europe and Indo-Pacific are inseparable.