A few days after the President of the European Council, Charles Michel (EUROPE 12613/40, 12612/1), the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, presented, on Wednesday 2 December, his vision of the future partnership between the EU and the United States.
“When the transatlantic partnership is strong, the EU and the US are both stronger”, underlines the joint communication from the High Representative and the Commission.
Their new agenda overlaps with the themes put forward by Mr Michel. It is a question of “working together” for a healthier world - Covid-19 and beyond; - to protect our planet and our prosperity; - on technology, trade and standards; - for a safer, more prosperous and more democratic world.
Believing that the fight against Covid-19 was the subject requiring the most global cooperation in the short term, the Commission stresses that the US and the EU should provide funding for the development and distribution of vaccines, tests and treatments and invites Washington to join and contribute to the COVAX Facility and the ACT Accelerator (ACT-A).
In order to be prepared for potential future pandemics, the EU and the US should develop a pandemic playbook for “preparedness and response” and strengthen cooperation and data sharing between their health agencies. In the multilateral framework, both sides should work together on strengthening and reforming the WHO and on facilitating trade in essential medical products, starting with the accession of the United States to the WTO Trade and Health Initiative.
As US President-elect Joe Biden announced that his country would join the Paris Agreement, the Commission intends to make the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss a strong focus of transatlantic cooperation. It therefore calls on the United States to become a climate-neutral country by 2050.
The Commission plans to launch a new transatlantic Green Trade Agenda in mid-2021, “which would include a trade and climate initiative in the WTO and measures to avoid carbon leakage”.
The two partners could also form a Green Technology Alliance, to “ensure greater cooperation on the development of clean and circular technologies and the creation of lead markets”. The two sides should also jointly design a global regulatory framework for sustainable financing “drawing on the experience of the EU taxonomy”.
Finally, Americans and Europeans should coordinate their positions and lead efforts to obtain the conclusion of “ambitious“ global agreements at the UN summits on climate and biodiversity in 2021 and join efforts in the fight against deforestation and the protection of the oceans.
As far as trade is concerned, the EU has chosen to communicate very ambitiously on future relations with the US. The aim is to establish the duo as a driving force in world trade. The Union proposes, for example, to join the efforts of the two blocs to establish standards for high-tech products, but also for everything that concerns fair trade.
Considering itself to be the two most influential regulators in the world, the EU believes in its joint communication that “where both sides agree, the rest of the world follows”. It seeks to establish itself as a key player alongside the United States in the field of high technology. It therefore proposes to create an EU-US Trade and Technology Council to work on reducing trade barriers, developing standards and promoting fair competition.
While the largest free trade agreement was signed on 15 November between 15 Asia-Pacific countries, the EU is responding by positioning itself as the natural strategic partner of the United States. The aggressive trade policy pursued so far towards the European Union by the various administrations on the other side of the Atlantic, however, casts doubt on the possibility of achieving such a level of relations.
Finally, the EU intends to regain its partner in terms of international security. The Commission proposes to strengthen their joint commitment to transatlantic and international security. This should, in its view, involve the establishment of a new bilateral dialogue on security and defence at a time when the Americans are concerned about the EU’s desire to develop its strategic autonomy. For the EU, both sides should coordinate their responses to common challenges in order to promote regional and global stability, starting with the EU’s neighbourhood.
The EU says it is ready to participate in the democracy summit proposed by Mr Biden “by making joint commitments to combat the rise of authoritarianism, human rights violations and corruption”.
It also wants better coordination on the adoption of sanctions, which would help the EU to avoid the consequences of the extraterritoriality of US measures. Finally, the EU and the US should join forces to strengthen the multilateral system on the basis of their common values.
The communication will be discussed by EU Foreign Ministers on Monday 7 December. The European Council, which is already due to work on Charles Michel’s proposals, is invited to approve this communication at its summit on 10 and 11 December. The aim is to launch the New Transatlantic Agenda at an EU-US Summit in the first half of 2021.
See the joint communication: https://bit.ly/3ompRSx (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant and Léa Marchal)