Japan's foreign ministry has taken the unusual step of publishing a very public Message to the United Kingdom and the European Union (PDF) in which it outlines how it wants Brexit to happen in order to protect the substantial investments its businesses have made in Europe and especially in the United Kingdom.
The document opens by stating that "Uncertainty is a major concern for an economy", before going on to explain that Japanese businesses that have chosen to make major investments in the UK are worried about what Brexit will mean.
"What Japanese businesses in Europe most wish to avoid is the situation in which that they are unable to discern clearly the way the Brexit negotiations are going, only grasping the whole picture at the last minute." The document therefore asks that the UK and the European Union negotiate transparently, provide lots of information about ongoing negotiations and offer decent advance warnings of any changes. Japan also hopes, fervently, that certain things don't change between Blighty and its continental pals.
High on that list is "maintaining the current level of information protection and the free transfer of data." [...] Japan also wants uniform intellectual property rights across the EU and UK and for Japanese businesses based in the UK to be able to employ Europeans. And vice-versa.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bd on Tuesday September 06 2016, @07:14PM
I'm not sure about japanese culture, but looking at their requests, aren't they saying that the UK should pretty much stay in the EU, or else? Not too polite.
While I agree that much of the UK press was heavily biased (either way) in their style of reporting anything concerning the EU in the last 15 years,
one could argue that nothing really has happened yet because nothing has been done so far.
Actually, while I believe that nothing too bad will happen, I think there is still a slight possibility it could go the wrong way. Wouldn't it be foolish to
assume that every outcome negociated during the exit procedures leads to similarily good long-term changes for the EU and the UK?
Politicians now arguably have to not be a complete failure, or bad things will happen. Now _that_ is something that scares me.