E.C. losing patience with Japanese

Press, 8 December 1987, Page 46

E.C. losing patience with Japanese

By

LINDA SIEG

of Reuters

NZPA-Reuter Tokyo Prospects of an economic slowdown in Europe are threatening to make European industrialists lose patience with Japan, a European Community (E.C.) leader said. “There is a change of climate within European industry,” the European Commission vice-presi-dent Kari-Heinz Narjes told a news conference.

“Industry is no longer ready to wait for the opening of the Japanese market. They are telling me they ... want reciprocity, that is, chances in the Japanese marekt — or protectionism.” “This will become a major political factor inside the Community if economic development should turn even worse,” Narjes said. The E.C. has asked Tokyo to reply quickly to market-opening demands including reform of taxes on imported liquor and access for European firms

to contracts for a new international airport being built in western Japan, the E.C. Commissioner for External Affairs, Willy De Clercq, told the news conference.

“We want to get very clear assurance on some very clear-cut questions to see if the Japanese Government is now really ready to take concrete measures to improve our relations,” said De Clercq. De Clercq is in Tokyo for talks with Japanese leaders including Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, who took office last month.

He said he expected Tokyo to come up with a proposal early in 1988 to revise its liquor tax in line with a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (G.A.T.T.) council ruling that Japan’s taxes discriminate against imported spirits and wines. Finance Ministry officials have said Japan is moving towards revising the liquor taxes as part of a sweeping tax

reform package to be im plemented from April 1 1989.

"We would not appreciate a link with an eventual global tax reform. The G.A.T.T. ruling is international and tax reform Is a domestic issue and you can’t mix them,” De Clercq said. Speaking at an E.C.Japan symposium earlier in the day, Narjes urged Japan and Europe to join to fill the gap left.by declining U.S. economic leadership. “Let me remind you that together Japan and the E.C. produce 46 per cent more than the United States and that their combined share in the world trade is double the American share,” Narjes said. “Thus, since there is a lack of economic leadership as a consequence of a certain erosion of U.S. economic power, there is no choice for Japan and the E.C. but to co-operate to keep the system going,” he said.