Strasbourg, 10/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - Karel De Gucht, EU Trade Commissioner, is banging his fist on the table: “We need more than paper deals. We need to ensure that the trade deals and rules we have negotiated with our partners are actually implemented on the ground”. On Thursday 10 March, his services published its first report on trade and investment barriers, which singles out important barriers in the markets of six strategic economic partners and proposes specific actions to remove the barriers. These countries cover 45% of the EU's trade in goods and commercial services, and 41% of the EU's foreign direct investment: China, India, Russia, Argentina and Brazil (leaders from the Mercosur bloc) and the US.
The 21 barriers listed range from China's indigenous innovation policy, to India's plans to establish burdensome licensing requirements in the telecommunications sector, to “Buy American” policies in the US, to Russia's new investment rules. The report also lists export restrictions on raw materials, which harm European companies that incorporate raw materials into their products. The European exports potentially affected by the barriers in the report represent around €100 billion and EU imports of raw materials potentially affected are worth around €6 billion. These figures do not equal “lost trade”, but they still give an indication of the trade volumes potentially affected by the barriers and the economic stakes involved, explained the European Commission, whose document proposes measures for dismantling the barriers in an effort to improve export and investment opportunities and create a more favourable environment for European companies and citizens. The report suggests concrete action such as the launch of an initiative to open government procurement markets, possible dispute settlement action, making the best use of high level fora such as the Transatlantic Economic Council or the EU-China High Level Economic Dialogue but also raising the barriers at the highest political level in bilateral summits with the countries concerned.
This report will be presented to the European Council on 24-25 March. (E.H./transl.fl)