EU and Japanese leaders expressed their “strong concern” at the rising food prices and called for urgent global action to alleviate the plight of the people in the developing world, on 23 April in Tokyo. During their annual summit, the EU and Japan pledged to cooperate on this issue and to mobilise the international community in view of increasing funds to fight global poverty. In a joint statement, the leaders underlined the “urgent need to address the issue, particularly in light of its acute impact on developing countries’ efforts to overcome poverty”. Japan has decided to add the global food crisis to the agenda of the G8 summit that it will host in July in Hokkaido.

“We have reasons to be sincerely concerned, so we hope we can mobilise the global community to another, additional effort in terms of development aid, mainly to Africa,” said José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, at the end of the summit. He and Prime Minister Janez Jansa of Slovenia, in charge of the EU Presidency, supported Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s proposal to bring the issue to the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Intensive consultations are ongoing in Geneva in order to salvage the Doha Round and both the EU and Japan have important defensive interest in agriculture. The situation of the multilateral trade talks was discussed in the margins of the summit with EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, and both sides see the coming WTO ministerial meeting scheduled for May as a “key opportunity” to conclude the round in 2008.

During the summit, the leaders discussed the most burning international crises, such as Iran, North Korea and the Middle East, development in Africa as well as the security architecture in East Asia.