The EU-Japan Centre is to continuously evolve, expand its activities and calibrate its mission to the present needs of the EU and Japan industrial and business communities.
With this in mind, we have defined our new strategic priorities, the main one being the reinforced support for SMEs, with a particular focus on internationalization aspects. The mutual importance of the issue is obvious. The SMEs represent the backbone of EU and Japanese economies. The share of SMEs in the economy is more than 99% for both EU and Japan with a fairly similar percentage in terms of employment creation (70-80%). Both in EU and Japan the SMEs are being seen as engines for economic growth, particularly through internationalization into outside strategic markets. It is about intercepting new drivers for growth badly needed by the stagnant economies of EU and Japan.
