A Japanese View of the EU
A Japanese View of the EU

Summary/Abstract: Do the Japanese see the EU as a global power? How do they see the causes of the financial crisis in the euro zone, and are they changing their perception of the EU because of the Euro crisis? Regulatory power is defined as a country's or an international organization’s power to set up its national or regional rules and standards as global rules and standards. Do the Japanese see the EU’s ‘regulatory power’ as strong, and do they think the EU’s ‘regulatory power’ declined because of the financial crisis in the euro zone? This paper presents the results of an analysis of questionnaire data as well as an investigation of newspaper articles in order to examine the Japanese perception of the EU empirically, and it also discusses academic works that relate to the result of the empirical analysis. The October 2012 questionnaire results show that the Japanese public has an impression that the EU is a global power rather than a regional power. In Japan, both business elites and university students generally think that the EU has strong power in the area of economics. However, the Japanese business elites feel that the EU’s power is declining because of the financial crisis. The Euro crisis has thus negatively affected the EU’s regulatory power. Even so, as the October 2012 questionnaire results show, more than 40% of Japanese business elites believe that the regulatory power of the EU has not declined even after the beginning of the Euro crisis. However, Japanese business elites continue to be anxious about the EU’s regulatory power.

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