Thinking about the content and reach of a future EU-Japan Digital Partnership calls for a multi-stakeholder approach, gathering perspectives from government officials, business representatives, and academic experts. This would allow to define practical areas and modalities of digital cooperation, explore multilateral or trilateral cooperation prospects with other like-minded partners, and asses their implications for the EU’s and Japan’s technological development, their weight in the digital economy, and their capacity to frame the global digital governance. It will also help identify the challenges ahead, including how to coordinate technological innovation, the applicability of normative principles to the digital sphere, and the limits of their normative influence.

Programme:

09:30 CET (17:30 JST) Welcoming words

José Juan Ruiz, Chairman, Elcano Royal Institute | @ElcanoJjRuiz
Kenji Hiramatsu, Ambassador of Japan to Spain | @JapanEmb_Spain

09:45 CET (17:45 JST) Keynote speech on the geostrategic importance of digitalization

Jun Murai, Distinguished Professor, Keio University.

10:00 CET (18:00 JST) Session 1: Materializing common visions: Technological and normative benefits.

The goal of this session is to explore the compatibility between the EU and Japanese approaches and policies on digitalization, upon which a digital partnership could be built, and the technological, economic, and normative outcomes such agreement would entail.

Moderator: Mario Esteban, Senior Analyst, Elcano Royal Institute | @wizma9

Speakers:

Akiko Fukushima, Senior Fellow, Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research | @tokyofoundation
Raül Blanco Díaz, General Secretary of Industry and SMEs, Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Tourism of Spain | @IndustriaGob
Bruno Gencarelli, Head of Unit International Data Flows and Protection DG Justice, European Commission | @BrunoGencarelli
Andrés Ortega, Senior Research Fellow, Elcano Royal Institute @andresortegak

11:30 CET (19:30 JST) Break

11:50 CET (19:50 JST) Session 2: Shaping global digital governance: multilateralism and third-party cooperation

This session discusses the implications such partnership would have on global digital governance, how the specific approach promoted by the EU and Japan could gain traction at the multilateral level, and how it could be promoted to third parties, key country partners, and in regions of particular interest for the two players.

Moderator: Miguel Otero Iglesias, Senior Analyst, Elcano Royal Institute| @miotei

Speakers:

Raquel Jorge, Analyst, Elcano Royal Institute | @RaquelJorgeR
Mira Burri, Professor, University of Lucerne | @miraburri
Kenichi Nakashima, Professor, Waseda University
Salvador Álvarez Pascual, Managing Director, Grupo Oesía-Tecnobit | @grupo_oesia

Hashtag: #EUJapanCooperation