TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Japan wants to hold a new meeting of the Economic Partnership Committee (EPC) with Taiwan for the first time in eight years, reports said Friday (Feb. 18).

The move was seen as a positive response to Taiwan’s decision to lift a ban on food imports from five Japanese regions hit by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. The revival of the EPC could also signal Japan’s positive attitude toward Taiwan’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

The Taiwanese official in charge of relations with Tokyo, Taiwan-Japan Relations Association (TJRA) Chairman Chiou I-jen (邱義仁), said his Japanese counterpart, Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association (JTEA) Chairman Ohashi Mitsuo (大橋光夫), brought up the subject of a third EPC meeting, CNA reported. Chiou described the suggestion, made Friday, as “extremely important and significant.”

At a speech during a video conference, Ohashi reiterated Japan’s support for Taiwan’s CPTPP application, filed last September, and its approval for the lifting of the food ban.

Chiou said the EPC with Japan had stopped functioning after a second meeting in 2014, partly due to Taiwan’s imposition of the import ban on food products from the five northeast prefectures. The group’s main topic of discussion had been Taiwan’s eventual membership of the CPTPP, then still called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), so Ohashi’s request for its revival was a significant move under the present circumstances, according to Chiou.