June 18, 2009
Delegation of the European Commission to Japan, Tokyo

 

Proceedings

Attendee list

Event Flyer

 

This event, hosted by the Delegation of the European Commission to Japan in Tokyo was organised by the COJAK FP7 project (see the About us section or download the COJAK flyer here), funded by the European Commission’s Directorate General Information Society and Media and aiming at supporting the development of EU-Japan cooperation on ICT research, particularly under the European Union’s FP7 research funding programme.

The event was part of a series of EU-Japan cooperation events, a series including the 1st “EU-Japan Cooperation Forum on ICT research” held in Tokyo on March 4-5, 2008, the “EU-Japan Seminar” held in Tokyo on May 20, 2008 and the 2nd “EU-Japan Cooperation Forum on ICT research” to be held in Brussels on July 2, 2009.

Around 60 representatives from academia, research institutes and companies based in Japan and active in the ICT area have participated in this event (see Attendee list here) while less than 50 were expected, which can be seen as a positive indicator of the interest of the Japanese ICT community in EU-Japan S&T cooperation.

The event programme (available here and allowing to access the presentations made during the event) included two parts, corresponding to the two main event objectives (introduced in the event announcement flyer available here):
• to introduce in detail the opportunities offered by FP7 to support the development of cooperation on ICT research between European and Japanese organisations, this objective being addressed through the “FP7 awareness workshop” part of the event,
• to develop an open discussion on how to enable to a more substantial development of such cooperation projects, this objective being addressed through the “EU-Japan Cooperation framework” part of the event.

Philippe de Taxis du Poët, First Counsellor, Delegation of the European Commission to Japan opened the event with a welcome address, in which he underlined several facts:
• The participation of Japanese organisations in FP7 calls is still limited, very far from countries such as Russia or China, but also the USA,
• Japanese organisations should consider a higher involvement in international cooperation (which the present global economic downturn can only push to do) and particularly in the research programme of the European Union (an entity that must definitely be seen from Japan not only as the addition of 27 countries!),
• The initialled EU-Japan cooperation agreement on S&T (expected to be signed before the end of 2009) will be key, with its three dimensions (guidance, IPR, reciprocity), in supporting a stronger development of cooperation projects between Europe and Japan.

Then Roger Torrenti, coordinator of the COJAK project, made a detailed presentation of the ICT theme of FP7 (interrupted by lively Q&A periods with the audience) starting with background information on the EU, on EU-Japan relations and on ICT in Europe, followed by an overview of FP7, of ICT research in FP7 and of International cooperation in FP7, underlining the status and potential of Japanese participation in FP7-funded research in ICT (6 ongoing projects to date, EU-Japan cooperation specifically called in a growing number of research areas) and concluded by the Whys and Hows of FP7 projects.

The next part of the agenda was devoted to “Examples of EU-Japan projects”, and included presentations from Hiroshi Kawamura, President of the Daisy Consortium, Tetsuo Ida, Professor at the University of Tsukuba, and Shingo Ohmori, Representative Director of CTIF Japan. These examples, related to cooperation with European Member States (Austria, Denmark, Sweden) completed the example of EU-Japan cooperation under FP7 given by Roger Torrenti (the Emime project) and revealed to be useful to show to the audience how such cooperation projects are initiated, how they are developing and what each partner can gain from them. Then, an open discussion on problems faced and possible solutions when developing cooperation research projects in ICT between Europe and Japan took place. Moderated by Roger Torrenti and involving the three above-mentioned speakers in a panel, this session allowed to address various issues and to reach to various conclusions. Among them:
• the reasons to go for international cooperation may differ from an organisation to another, depending on its activity and strategy; however, the increased globalisation of R&D during the last 10-15 years is a just a reality to be faced and that can only push most organisations to go for international cooperation,
• cooperation takes time to be initiated and organisations interested in developing cooperation projects should be prepared to invest enough time and efforts,
• a research project is not necessarily the main objective to target when deciding to go for international cooperation; the exchange of researchers and of research staff (taking advantage of existing funding schemes in Europe and in Japan) often reveals to be a very relevant first step,
• the S&T cooperation agreement to be soon signed between the EU and Japan will be very important to boost existing cooperation, thank to a greater involvement of Japanese funding agencies (JSPS, JST, NEDO, etc.), the possibility to install some match-funding mechanism on the Japanese side, or to envision the launch coordinated or joint calls, etc.,
• existing connections of Japanese organisations with European organisations should be used as one of the preferred ways for Japanese organisations to be involved in FP7 proposals: in this case the Japanese organisation can ask the European organisation its is connected with - which is most probably involved in FP7 projects - to consider its participation in a future project (when no such connections exist, time needed to identify European partners, potential projects, etc. may be quite long),
• even if in some years EU-Japan cooperation on ICT research, namely under FP7, has made good progress, it remains necessary to develop awareness raising and information dissemination activities in Japan, and to provide opportunities for Japanese and European organisations to get connected (cooperation events, online communities, etc.

A presentation from Julien Guerrier, General Manager of the EU-Japan Center for industrial cooperation, concluded the programme. He announced that the companies contributing to this Center were paying an increasing attention, beyond business cooperation, to S&T cooperation, namely in the ICT area. Several activities will therefore be developed by the Center in order to support the strengthening of EU-Japan S&T cooperation and to answer in particular the needs reported above in terms of awareness raising, information, and connection.

After the event, delegates were invited to join the reception given by the Delegation of the European Commission to Japan on the occasion of the presence in Tokyo of José Manuel Silva Rodriguez, Director General of European Commission’s DG Research, who underlined in his speech the mutual strategic interest of a quick strengthening of EU-Japan S&T cooperation, which the initialled S&T cooperation agreement will usefully support.