Japan and the European Union (EU) gave up seeking a broad agreement on a bilateral Economic Partnership Agreement or EPA.
At a press conference held in Tokyo on December 17, EU chief negotiator Mauro Petriccione said that there remains distance on some issues in farm and automobile free trade deals, which need to be bridged between EU and Japan.
Chief negotiator Petriccione emphasized, however, that both sides agreed to resume their talks at the beginning of next year, setting early 2017 as a new deadline for a broad agreement on the EPA free trade negotiations.
The European Union has been calling for Japan to cut tariffs on farm products such as cheese and pork more than the levels agreed in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade negotiations.
At the news conference, EU chief negotiator reiterated that Brussels are growing its interests in boosting exports of European farm products particularly of cheese and pork to Japan.
Meanwhile, both of Lower and Upper House Committees on Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party have respectively adopted a resolution urging the Japanese administration to maintain boarder measures including import duties for key commodities such as pork and dairy products, which enable domestic farmers to reproduce them.