Brussels, 16/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - European Commissioner Pascal Lamy, responsible for trade, is in Washington on Tuesday, in view of talks with his American counterpart Robert Zoellick on the plan of launching a new round of multilateral negotiations next autumn and on a series of differences that remain in transatlantic relations. At around 15.00 hrs., local time, the two should make a "positive announcement" (announcement of an amicable solution?) regarding the 18 cases in the steel industry that the Union is preparing to take before the World Trade Organisation, informed sources in Brussels tell us. Progress was also expected in the affair of the hormone-treated meat.
Lamy and Zoellick will examine the difficulties that are still posing an obstacle to the opening of a round on Doha, including the problems met by developing countries. With the President of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, they will consider the path to take in the last furlong of preparations to convince these countries to abandon their reservations and rally round the goal of a controlled opening up of markets. A little before that meeting, the Americans said, through the Deputy Representative for Trade, Peter Allgeier, that they acknowledged that "for the launch, it is necessary to have a reconciling agenda of the major interests of the different groups of countries".
In addition, in Brussels, expectations are that Messrs. Lamy and Evans, Trade Secretary, should turn to the "solution that seems to be emerging" concerning the 18 steel cases, for which the deadline for a request for arbitration within the WTO was set for 12 July. The Commissioner was also to raise the European veto against GE buying out Honeywell with the anti-trust authorities, Charles James, of the Justice Department and Timothy Muris of the Federal Trade Commission. Among the ten or so differences in suspense, on which the partners want to avoid confrontation as far as possible, there should be question of hormone-treated meat, the American tax system in favour of Foreign Sales Corporations (an affair in which the EU may win the day, as long as current guidelines are confirmed, in Geneva on 13 August), genetically modified organisms and the extraterritorial scope of ISLA and Helms Burton legislation. President Bush should, moreover, reveal his stance on Title III of this legislation (whose implementation has been regularly suspended since its adoption in 1996), which enables American citizens dispossessed of property in Cuba by the Castro regime to prosecute foreign companies that currently exploit them, with the effect of paralysing their business.