EU exec urges Japan to court foreign capital

Visiting European External Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has urged Japan to make more efforts to accept foreign direct investment to fix its unbalanced capital ties with Europe.

"As a foreigner looking at Japan from outside, what I see is a globalization paradox. For decades, Japan has taken advantage of an open global investment climate," Mandelson said in a lecture Monday in Tokyo. "Yet at home it remains the most closed investment market in the developed world."

Mandelson said European firms are not inactive in trying to invest in Japan, but they are "frustrated by the difficulty of investing here," noting that a developed mergers-and-acquisition market is missing and many important laws are published in Japanese only.

He said Japan still has many restrictions on direct investment, "far more than Japanese companies face in Europe," and European firms can't tap into the agriculture, forestry and maritime transport sectors.