Japan has filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) over China’s ban on importing all its seafood products, following the start of the release of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
The Japanese government urged China to “remove the restriction as soon as possible,” which it considers to have no scientific basis, Japanese government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said today at a press conference, revealing the filing of the complaint and qualifying the decision. of Beijing as “unfortunate”.
Japan also called on China to review the veto based on the rules of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a free trade agreement the two countries are associated with in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc.
Hours earlier, before leaving for Indonesia to participate in an ASEAN summit, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he hopes to explain to his Southeast Asian counterparts “in a transparent way the process of cleaning up the waters” so that ” understand and cooperate in multilateral and bilateral meetings”.
On August 24, the company that owns the critically ill Fukushima nuclear power plant began discharging treated water from the plant, which consists of water used to cool damaged reactors and melted fuel, as well as rainwater that has leaked into the installation. and that has been contaminated and subsequently treated to remove dangerous radioactive elements.
The discharge of sewage into the ocean is expected to continue for decades.
Since the plan became known, neighboring countries such as China have opposed the eviction for security reasons, despite having been authorized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which says it complies with international security measures and that It will not affect human and environmental damage. It will be, in principle, harmless.
Tokyo insists that the water is safe, while Beijing has decided, in response, to impose an import ban on all seafood from the archipelago.
Japan also today announced an emergency fund to help exporters affected by the ban from mainland China, Macao and Hong Kong.
The fund will have a value of 20.7 billion yen (130.6 million euros).
The Japanese prime minister affirmed that the emergency fund is in addition to the 80,000 million yen (507 million euros) that the Government previously assigned to these companies to combat the damage caused to the reputation of Japanese products.
Source: TSF
