New EBC chairman prepared for best outcomes
Duco Delgorge sets ambitious goals. As the new chairman of the European Business Council in Japan, he hopes to help lift the EU-Japan relationship “to a totally new level”.
This is not an idle wish, but an overdue necessity, according to Delgorge.
“The level of trade and cooperation between Japan and the EU is simply not good enough,” he says.
At the top of the new chairman’s agenda, formally beginning 1 January, is galvanising support for everyone working toward an EU-Japan Free Trade Agreement (FTA)/Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).
“There is a schedule for that now,” he says. “This is what the EBC has been working on for about four years. The leaders of both regions have committed to getting such an agreement in place, so we have an awful lot of work to do to make sure that all the details are available to support the negotiation process.”
There is, however, another key element to ensure that European business truly succeeds in Japan.
“I also want to make sure that European companies recognise that Japan has enormous untapped opportunities for business,” Delgorge says. “They look at other markets that may seem to offer more potential, but we know that Japan has a lot of potential.”
Nor is he interested in anything except a win/win situation. The message to Japanese officials, business leaders and consumers is that “it is in their interests to open up their market.”
With a groundswell of agreement on the Japanese side, he adds: “We have to make sure they follow through and that all the obstacles are removed.”
Asked about the preparedness of the EBC for the task ahead, Delgorge gives full praise to predecessors Richard Collasse and Tommy Kullberg. It was Collasse who pushed for a comprehensive EU-Japan agreement, and Kullberg who led the organisation into direct engagement on that topic with the Japanese side.
“We are more prepared than we have ever been,” Delgorge says, noting that this year the EBC will be 40 years old. “We have been working for a long time on these issues, and in the past six to eight years we have seen an enormous amount of progress.”
He explains that the 30 EBC industry and service sector committees are working on their own sets of issues with which to inform the EU negotiators, and he will be sure to encourage any committees that fall off the pace. This is being prepared as a “digital compendium” which is functionally distinct from the annual EBC White Paper that it replaces and will be a vital reference source for negotiators.
“Now we need to go to the next level of detail,” says Delgorge. “For a particular obstacle, we need to be able to say: “This regulation needs to be changed in this way, or to be removed.”
A Dutch national educated in Australia, Delgorge is founder and president of Tokyo-based Mie Project, which imports and distributes primarily European organic food products. He has been a member of the EBC Executive Operating Board for both the Belgian-Luxembourg and the Netherlands chambers of commerce. He has chaired the EBC Food Committee and the EBC Organic Products Committee, and most recently the EBC Sustainable Development Committee.
At the time of writing, the Japanese and EU governments were proceeding with a scoping exercise to get both sides on the same page about the shape of negotiations. “The scoping exercise is all about setting the parameters for the agreement. We are hoping the level will be very high,” Delgorge states. “By that I mean removal of all tariff barriers – that’s the easy one – and to go as far as possible with non-tariff barriers [NTBs].”
A joint statement at the conclusion of the scoping exercise, expected this month, must then be ratified by EU member states. Delgorge is hopeful this will proceed smoothly.
“Last year’s EU-Japan summit was a defining moment in that a very clear statement came out regarding the FTA/EPA. We expect that in the 2012 summit it can be announced that we will now enter negotiations, based on the scoping exercise,” he says.
Although the general view is that the issue is primarily tariff barriers in the EU and NTBs in Japan, Delgorge warns against oversimplification. In any case, the role of the EBC is to ensure that all significant obstacles to trade, both tariff and non-tariff, are identified in the process, and subsequently removed where common sense would dictate this to be possible.
And he disagrees with those who anticipate foot-dragging by Japan over removal of barriers even with an FTA/EPA in place, simply because so many of the pertinent laws could not be changed or discarded without approval by the Diet.
“That is why we have been saying for so long that we need to have an agreement – because discussing regulations one by one with the bureaucracy is a process that goes nowhere,” he says. This is what has happened for several decades with no meaningful result he notes. Delgorge says he would be “more than disappointed” if Japan and the EU fail to take the next step in a relationship that both sides describe as between “like-minded global partners and major economies sharing common values”.
That being the case, Delgorge asks: “Why is the level of trade and cooperation so low?”
He believes that leaders on both sides understand the necessity, that they are committed, and that they will deliver.
“It is plain and simple – no tariff barriers, no non-tariff barriers,” he adds. “There is no justification for them anymore, on any grounds, and so I am optimistic [regarding the fulfilment of the agreement]. And I will do everything possible to make it happen.”
Asked why he was keen to take on the EBC chairmanship, Delgorge refers to the time and effort he has already invested over a period of 10 years with the EBC.
“I want to see the results,” he says.
Building relationships is also a large part of the task.
“I want to do everything I can to strengthen the relationship between the EU and Japan,” he says.
Delgorge’s twin passions for environmental responsibility and for business excellence tie in perfectly with the desire to help improve the EU-Japan relationship.
Without robust economies, he argues, ecological problems are intractable.
“Ecology, business success and the trade relationships are all interrelated,” he concludes. “I will be working on all three.”