EU/Japan agreement: air services - Recommendation

Strasbourg, 11 July 2023 - I voted in favor of the recommendation on the Agreement between the European Union and Japan on certain aspects of air services. The Commission has negotiated an agreement with Japan (“the Agreement”) to replace certain provisions in existing bilateral air services agreements between Member States and Japan, in order to bring bilateral air services agreements into line with EU law, as requested by the Court of Justice in the so-called “open skies” cases of 2002.

It is not, in fact, a global air services agreement. It is a rather restricted agreement and therefore not very comprehensive in terms of content, since it is exclusively aimed at ensuring that EU companies can fly from any member state to Japan and vice versa. It only concerns the 13 member states (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden) that currently have a bilateral air services agreement with Japan and, as well as ensuring compliance with the EU treaties, it also harmonizes, to a certain extent, some of the essential aspects as a result of the fragmentation of the different bilateral agreements.

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