Washington/Brussels, 08/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - In its first comments on the European Commission White Paper on governance that was published on Friday, the US government said that it "supports the five principles… set out in the European Commission's White Paper on governance - openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence". "The US government would like to see the EU continue to be a strategic global partner - one we can work closely with to address political, security and economic issues of common concern. Given this closeness, it is important to recognise that US entities are equally affected by EU regulations. Therefore, our ability to share our views effectively in the EU legislative and rule-making process is important. We are encouraged by the rich debate that the Commission's paper has engendered through all the European institutions."
The US "find the paper's call for the adoption of minimum standards for consultation (a code of conduct) to be especially constructive, provided consultations are genuinely open and transparent to all interested parties, domestic and foreign, and take place sufficiently early in the process to be meaningful. Transparent and open procedures for regulatory planning and development and effective public participation in the rule-making process can be extremely useful in preventing trade problems associated with such measures. A growing number of US trade concerns stem from the lack of transparency and the process by which the EU develops technical regulations…. Unfortunately, under current EU procedures, notifications of proposed technical regulations are only made to the WTO after the European Commission has finalised its proposal. As a result, in most cases, the United States and other interested members are unlikely to have a meaningful opportunity to have concerns addressed or reflected in legislative provisions. There are also a number of EU procedures that are designed to provide greater intra-EU transparency but do not provide the same level of transparency to non-EU stakeholders. More importantly, the European Commission is not governed by comparable procedural requirements and transparency obligations as the EU Member States…. In addition, while the Commission issues "Green" and "White" in advance of some primary legislation, most secondary legislation is not accompanied by such public documents."
The US government notes that "the United States and the European Commission are working under the Transatlantic Economic Partnership (TEP) to develop government guidelines designed to promote more effective US-EU regulatory co-operation and better access to their respective regulatory development proceedings. The TEP Guidelines are intended to promote a more systematic dialogue between US and European regulators early in the development of regulatory approaches. The Guidelines also stress transparency and public participation as necessary elements to … help minimise possible regulatory-based trade disputes".