La dolce vita

As the EU’s commissioner for trade, Cecilia Malmström lives to strengthen connections and increase prosperity. She oversaw negotiations on the EU–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), the world’s biggest and most comprehensive trade pact, which came into force on 1 February.

For more than a decade, it looked like pirates might sink the music industry. After annual physical album sales peaked in 1999 at $25.2 billion globally, the rampant spread of online piracy nearly halved the industry’s revenue, bringing it down to $14.3 billion in 2014.

Austria and Japan established diplomatic ties in 1869 with the signing of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, and this year marks 150 years of close bilateral relations.

As Tokyo’s premier health and fitness centre, Club 360 is your one-stop-shop for personal training, boxing, physiotherapy, osteopathy, sports massage and group fitness classes. 

Sporting IWC timepieces at the annual tradeshow were celebrities such as Bradley Cooper, Rosamund Pike, Dev Patel, James Marsden and Ryohei Suzuki. They were there to promote a new line of 14 IWC Pilot’s Watches, including seven revamped Spitfire watches that are meant to evoke the overall aesthetics, as well as the cockpit design, of the storied British aircraft.

Sports fans around the world are getting excited about the major sporting events set to take place in Japan this year and next: the Rugby World Cup will be held this autumn and the Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics next July, August and September. British Ambassador to Japan Paul Madden spoke with Eurobiz Japan about the importance of these events to the UK and the new opportunities they will bring.

Many business operators in Japan have a stake in the continuation of a smooth trading relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, but as the UK draws closer to its scheduled departure from the EU at the end of this month, firms are still struggling to assess the potential impact of Brexit on trading conditions and their supply chains.

Euft van den Berg, from the Netherlands, founded MEES International School as a place where children can be children.

America may be a republic, but there the customer is king; Japan’s emperor may not be divine, but here the customer is God — wherever you go, businesses stress the absolute primacy of the customer. But as firms the world over compete for those same kings and gods …

After working as a lawyer at an international law firm in Brussels from 2002 to 2012, Brent Van Tassel joined Belgium’s foreign service. His first posting was to Burundi, a former colony, as consul of Belgium. Since 2016, he has been serving as first secretary …

A slew of horrifying statistics — and a video of a turtle with a straw stuck in its nose — have helped raise awareness of the danger posed by disposable plastic over the past few years. Some 275 million tonnes of plastic waste are produced annually around the globe …

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