Participants of the XVII Forum Spain-Japan./ Picture: Diario Montañés
Julio García. Madrid.
The deepening of the political dialogue and the economic, commercial, scientific and technological cooperation between Spain and Japan is going through an “excellent” time, as well as the teaching of both languages. The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has expressed its commitment, as the rest of the Spanish Government, to continue with this strategic commitment to strengthen the relations with Japan, especially in the business and scientific fields.
The secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Gonzalo de Benito, in his participation at the XVII Forum Spain-Japan, celebrated in Santander the last two days, went over the good compliance of the waybill drafted in the declaration of the Association for Peace, Growth and Innovation, which was signed a year ago by the president of the Spanish Government, Mariano Rajoy, and the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe.
Besides, outside the forum, De Benito held a meeting with the Japanese minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Minoru Kiuchi, the Japanese delegate assigned to this meeting, where they dealt with bilateral relations and global matters of common interest, especially the incorporation of Spain into the United Nations Security Council as a non-permanent member for the period 2015-2016.
Both countries want to take advantage of the promotion of the relations on the occasion of the Dual Year
After two days of meetings, which have had the participation of 200 representatives of both countries, the final report elaborated by the two presidents of the forum, the Spanish Josep Piqué and the Japanese Shinici Yokoyama, expressed the need to make the most of the promotion of the relations Spain-Japan after the celebration of the Dual Year and to suggest new exchanges for the future, among them, the prompt ending of the negotiations for the free trade agreement between the European Union and Japan for 2015.
Besides, those attending the event highlighted the opportunities of business collaboration in third emerging countries in Asia and Latin America, and, in the fields of science and technology, invited to open new cooperation opportunities in biomedicine, nanotechnology and medical innovation applied to the ageing of societies.
Other proposals in this forum have been the demand of equipment that allows increasing the number of joint scientific and technological projects, the promotion of intelligent cities in both countries, as well as tourism and the study of the respective languages.
