Luxembourg, 12/10/2005 (Agence Europe) - Tuesday's ECOFIN Council in Luxembourg backed a British Presidency working document on transatlantic links over financial services, prepared in collaboration with the future Austrian and Finnish Presidencies. The document looks at measures to boost economic links with the United States and the 2005 Roadmap on Regulatory Cooperation adopted at the EU-US Summit of June this year. The Summit set the target of setting up a genuine transatlantic market in the next few years and a high-level forum on regulatory cooperation (the form and timetable of which are still on the drawing board, see EUROPE 8974).
On financial services, the establishment of an informal regulatory dialogue in 2002 allowed improvements in exchange of information and mutual trust and understanding. The ECOFIN Council's working document explains that the dialogue allowed the EU and the US to develop rules with greater knowledge of the way the said rules impact outside the EU or the US, cutting transatlantic regulatory friction in areas like financial conglomerates' audits and controls.
Support for technological innovation is another objective of the EU-United States Summit, with action in areas like long-term cooperation on basic research, trade applications and results of R&D, dialogue on developing and responsibly using nanotechnology and boosting the EU-United States agreement on higher education and professional training.
On trade between the EU and the US, the ECOFIN Council commented that annual trade in goods and services between the two blocks stood at EUR 600 bn, with European fdi in the US and US fdi in the EU accounting for 58% and 72% respectively of all investment in the two areas.