Replies from Fabrizio Mura on behalf of the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation
Questions :
- Give a small summary of your organisation’s mission
A: The EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation is a joint venture established in 1987 by the European Commission (DG GROW) and the Japanese Government (METI) for promoting all forms of industrial, trade and investment cooperation between the EU and Japan. It is jointly funded and managed by both sides. It has its head office in Tokyo and an office in Brussels.
- Why is Japan an attractive market for European EO companies?
A: While Japan has an advanced and competitive EO space infrastructure and is home to a large and sophisticated end-user market, opportunities exist in a number of – sometimes untapped - downstream markets including services for agriculture & forestry, fisheries, maritime vessel monitoring and drones. Furthermore, because of the relatively smaller experience in the internationalization of Japan’s EO programme, we see chances for joint cooperation in third countries such as Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia. We also see possibilities for joint innovation and R&D cooperation under future EU and/or Japan framework programmes.
- You offer a lot of tools to help European companies access the Japanese market, is there one tool that you recommend more for Europeans EO companies?
A: for EU SMEs interested in Japan, consider using our Enterprise Europe Network Japan partner search service (start from: https://www.een-japan.eu/), in combination with our Cluster Support Mission on ICT / IoT, which will take place between 19 and 22 November this year around a major Japanese trade fair called Embedded and IoT Technology 2019 (more details + application form available at: https://www.eu-japan.eu/events/ict-cluster-sme-mission ).
- During the IDEEO workshop you spoke about different events you are currently organising, can you talk about them a bit more and what are the opportunities/activities for European companies? Why should a company join?
A: there are 2 benefits of participating in our Cluster Support Missions: 1) we help you to open doors in Japan by giving you access to matchmaking events which we organize onsite in combination with networking / pitching opportunities; 2) after each Mission, we follow-up from Japan in order to support your goal towards finding partners.