Tokyo (Brussels Morning) – EU Commission and Japan enhance collaboration in education, culture, and sports policies, emphasizing mobility, digital education, and cultural preservation.
Today, representatives from the EU Commission and the Japanese government assembled in Tokyo for the third edition of the EU-Japan Policy Dialogue in the extents of education, culture, and sport. Both parties acknowledge the importance of mutual cooperation as a vector for exchanges of best practices, pedagogical techniques, and strategies for guideline development and innovation in these areas.
This third dialogue was together headed by Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Iliana Ivanova and Japan’s Minister for Education, Culture, Sport, Science and Technology, Masahito Moriyama.
Both parties agreed on the benefits of encouraging student and academic staff mobility between the EU and Japan. International mobility techniques, like the Erasmus+ programme, play a pivotal function in promoting people-to-people exchanges, improving skills development, as well as promoting academic excellence. Over the last three years, the Erasmus+ programme showed mobility opportunities to about 1750 higher students and academic staff to take an interest in global mobility exchanges between Europe and Japan. However, there is potential to do more.
By funding mobility programmes, both the EU and Japan harness the full possibility of their educational ecosystems and donate to global knowledge creation. For this objective, an Erasmus+ National Focal Point will now be founded in Japan, to reinforce international cooperation with Japan in the implementation of mobility schemes as well as further encourage the opportunities presented under Erasmus+ to Japanese and European students and academic staff.
In the field of education, today’s exchanges between the EU and Japan also deliver valuable insights on how to steer the opportunities and challenges proposed by digital education. Participants examined ways of exploring the trustworthy integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in schools to increase its potential to personalise learning backgrounds, improve educational outcomes, and equip students for the needs of the digital age. The dialogue also included talks on ethical considerations, data privacy matters, and the need for improved digital skills and digital literacy among educators and learners. To persist in discussing and exchanging practices on these critical topics, the parties decided to hold a follow-up seminar on digital education in the next months.
The third policy dialogue also concentrated on digital technologies offered to document, preserve, and virtually communicate cultural heritage. Both parties settled on the transformative shift that digital transformation symbolises in societies, economies, and cultures, with profound importance for cultural heritage and the associated skills demanded for its preservation and promotion.
The EU and Japan shared expertise on the advancement of sport and healthy lifestyles among young generations, as well as improving the effectiveness and inclusivity of sports programmes, helping individuals and societies alike.
The EU-Japan policy dialogue in education, culture and sport, was established in 2018. Since then two dialogue sessions have been held. The first policy conference took place in July 2018 in Budapest, while the second took place in May 2021 in video form because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both policy dialogue meetings described an occasion to exchange views and practices on several thematic issues such as enhancing student exchanges via highly integrated master’s programmes between European and Japanese universities, as well as evaluating the impacts of the pandemic on education, culture and sports policies on both sides.
