The 11th Format 2 2 meeting was held in Queenscliff, Victoria on 5 September. As a reminder, this type of event was established in 2007.

The meeting was attended by the country’s foreign and defence ministers Penny Wong and Richard Marles and their Japanese counterparts Yōko Kamikawa and Minoru Kihara.

The last meeting took place in December 2022, which is considered almost the most successful in the process of bilateral rapprochement. In that year, the trend towards a dramatic increase in “defence and security” became clear. In early January 2022, Prime Ministers Scott Morrison and Fumio Kishida signed the Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) via video conference. This document allowed combat units of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) to remain in Australia to participate in certain exercises.

In October of the same year, F. Kishida met with Anthony Albanese in Perth, Australia. The “Joint Declaration”, adopted as a result of the talks at that time, became a fundamental document for the further development of bilateral cooperation in the field of “defence and security”.

In this context, the 11th meeting of the Japan-Australia Format 2 2, which is the subject of this article, focused on the implementation of the key provisions of the Joint Declaration.

Japan and the challenge of Australia’s frigate fleet renewal

In February 2024, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles announced the launch of an international tender for the purchase of 11 advanced frigates worth a total of $11 billion. Companies from Germany, France, Spain, Japan and the Republic of Korea are expected to participate.

The Australian Navy currently has eight ANZAC class frigates, which were designed in the early 1990s on the basis of the MEKO 200 frigate by the German company Blohm und Voß. They were under........

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