Brussels, 24/04/2007 (Agence Europe) - Less than a week before the EU-United States summit to be held in Washington on 30 April, the president of BusinessEurope, the confederation of European businesses, Antoine Seillière presented his organisation's position on trade issues to press in Brussels on Monday. He said that European employers were keen to see the successful conclusion of the Doha Round and called for genuine progress in the liberalisation of transatlantic trade.
Transatlantic economic relations - Mr Seillière, supporting the initiative by current President of the EU Council Angela Merkel, to create a transatlantic market, said he hoped that the Washington summit would bring real progress in the development of transatlantic economic relations. Such progress would involve, he said, a binding agreement between the two parties to remove trade barriers and avoid all types of protectionism, which would be submitted to the US Congress for ratification and to the European co-legislators, the Council and European Parliament, for approval. Such an agreement should be based on two priorities: regulatory convergence, on the one hand, and a climate favourable to investment, on the other. On the first of these, Mr Seillière said that Europeans and Americans should increase their cooperation by harmonising their regulations in sectors (such as chemicals, cars and food products) where they create real costs for companies, and by using studies to identify the regulatory barriers which pose the greatest problems for companies and then setting out a clear timetable for their removal. On the second, BusinessEurope, worried about a possible resurgence of protectionism in the US, also expects the Washington summit to provide a commitment from both parties not to introduce new restrictions to investors and to give greater legal security to companies which want to develop.
Another issue that BusinessEurope wants dealt with urgently is respect for intellectual property rights (IPR) and the related fight against piracy and counterfeiting. It would also like to see convergence of patent procedures. Finally, BusinessEurope calls for a relaxation of the rules on American public contracts, which are too often closed to European companies, increased cooperation in the field of energy and combating climate change, and general reflection on security rules to be applied to goods exported from one side or other of the Atlantic.
Doha negotiations - Mr Seillière also noted how important it was to make progress in the Doha negotiations to bring them to a conclusion before the end of the year. BusinessEurope has begun to assess what it could do to get the emerging countries to accept greater tariff reductions on industrial goods, so that none of their import tariffs is above 15%.
Trade protection - Mr Seillière also spoke about BusinessEurope involvement in the consultation procedure being carried out by the Commission of stakeholders affected by the review of the EU trade defence mechanism (see EUROPE 9322 and 9387). He said two key points were missing from the debate: - firstly, the link between competitiveness and the trade defence measures - BusinessEurope supports the legitimate rights of some European industries (chemical products and non-ferrous metals) to use trade defence measures to maintain their competitiveness - and, secondly, the need for predictable trade defence investigations and decision making procedures.
Market access - Welcoming the adoption of the new Commission access strategy to third country markets for European business, Mr Seillière called on Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson to be the EU ambassador for market access throughout the world. (eh)