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Commissioner Mandelson's Speech on 'Strengthening EU-US trade' in Davos

Summary: January 27, 2005: Extracts from the speech of Peter Mandelson, European Commissioner for Trade, on 'Strengthening EU-US trade' to the Transatlantic Business Dialogue, Davos, Switzerland

Key themes

Although I know the main purpose of today's session is to discuss both your 2004 recommendations, your ideas for 2005, and the already famous Davos Declaration, I hope you will forgive me, as a TABD new boy, if I take a minute to sketch out the current state of our thinking on the future of EU-US trade and economic relations, given the very solid and thoughtful contribution that TABD has given to us.

First, the health warnings. Our thinking remains at a very early stage, including within the Commission, and I and my colleagues, including Benita Ferrero-Waldner, have obviously yet to put ideas to the Member States, or even the Presidency. Our stakeholder consultation, like that of the US, finished only a few weeks ago, and we are still processing ideas, thinking about the scope for action.

But first, what did the stakeholders come up with? A total of 132 replies, from the business community, environmental and consumer organisations, trade unions and other interested groups and individuals. In addition, we have had very useful input from a number of Member States, showing the extent of interest in this process.

On the substance, we are very pleased at the level of detail and interesting new angles. But we are also somewhat reassured that while the thinking is refreshingly outside the box, it's still on the reservation, as they might say in Texas. For instance, although many respondents refer to the desirability of reducing tariffs, they consider by a large majority that this would be best achieved within the context of the Doha Round rather than bilaterally, not least because if the big beasts in the jungle like the EU and US were to decide to eliminate tariffs just between themselves, it could fatally, and unnecessarily, kill this key part of the multilateral negotiation. I say "unnecessarily" because in fact, few respondents told us that they regarded transatlantic tariffs as a major impediment to their business.

Two things in turn follow from this. Firstly, most contributions have focused on other issues. For example, there are general complaints about what is sometimes seen as a lack of transatlantic political will on both sides to seek solutions to conflict, or to implement existing bilateral instruments properly, which - if true - greatly concerns me.

Other problems are pretty well known, such as the divergence in regulations, standards and certification procedures or the lack of recognition of international standards; the difficulties relating to security measures post 9/11, procurement, IPR; more on these issues in a moment.

Secondly, it follows that while there were still a number of far-reaching and comprehensive proposals for binding agreements, including for a Free Trade Area, a Common Economic Area, a Trade and Investment Agreement, or what have you, we had other respondents preferring some kind of non-binding 'Regulatory Partnership Initiative' looking at better regulation and reduction of administrative burden.

Finally, before I tell you the broad lines of our own thinking, I was extremely pleased to note that a number of respondents have correctly, in my view, zeroed in on progress on the Lisbon Agenda as an important prerequisite for the reinvigoration of the transatlantic economic relationship. If you look at the priorities identified in the Kok report, such as establishing a favourable climate to business and enterprise, I would be really astonished if the minds round this table didn't have something to say of relevance on both sides of the Atlantic. The internal and external dimensions of the Lisbon Agenda have at very least the potential to reinforce each other mutually. Questions such as: how can we make the EU more competitive internally? But also, how do we address the practices of third countries, in the US and elsewhere, whose trade barriers affect the performance of EU companies? I think this is a useful perspective on the transatlantic exercise.

So finally, what kind of preview can I give you of our own thinking, bearing in mind, please, the very early stage we are at? I would like to outline some ideas.

The first is that any initiative will have to contain a sizeable dollop of improved regulatory cooperation or convergence. Perhaps the most obvious example is in the area of financial markets, where there is an existing dialogue. This has made significant progress in several difficult areas, such as the regulation of auditors in the Sarbanes Oxley Act, where there is a good programme of work for 2005 but where even more intense regulatory cooperation can only help what is already a solid process. A further example exists on the goods side. Here, the focus of existing efforts is largely on improving cooperation between regulators in the area of technical regulation and standards, and we in the Commission are ready to look at all ways to bolster these efforts, all the way up to strengthening our efforts to develop common or international standards.

The second area concerns trade and security. On the one side, we know, on both sides of the Atlantic, how important it is to address post 9/11 security concerns. But I think we could and should seek the least impact possible on trade, in areas such as visas, container tracking devices, export controls on dual use goods, customs procedures or trade facilitation. Again, this may mean harmonisation in some areas, such as common or international security standards. Europe has to be ready to work with the US on ensuring security against the grave threat of terrorism, but the US can and should work more closely with us to ensure trade continues to flow freely.

The next area is services more generally, where once again the idea of mutual recognition could be a good complement to the GATS negotiations, for example in licensing and recognition of professional qualifications - such as for architects. In the past, the decentralised nature of US regulation meant that we could make little progress in this or other areas, but might well profit from increased political momentum if we can get an EU-US initiative off the ground, and if there is sufficient interest from the professional associations.

Talking of getting things off the ground, forgive me, I do hope we can also move forward the talks on air transport, which have been halted since the summer of 2004. We on our side want an ambitious agreement, and now would be a good moment to re-launch the talks.

Next, what I would call the old favourites, such as public procurement and intellectual property. "Buy America" policies and difficulties linked to sub-federal rights in procurement, and some fundamental differences of view on IPR in areas such as patents would suggest little room for optimism. I am not so sure. These areas are so fundamental to international competitiveness and fair international competition - including of course the third country aspects - that I would very much like to explore them properly with the US authorities before taking any definitive view. In both areas, of course, we always need to ensure that we do not jeopardize what is going on in the GPA or WIPO.

Finally, let me nod in the direction of some new, interesting and difficult areas. Just to take one example, again related to our mutual quest for international competitiveness, let's be bold in hi tech. We already have a policy dialogue in these areas, but why not look for a common regulatory framework? There is clearly a lot of interest in areas such as e-commerce, internet governance, anti-spam legislation, and quite a lot of criticism about the haphazard way we are starting to regulate the digital economy and new cyber technologies.


  • Ref: SP05-214EN
  • EU source: European Commission
  • UN forum: 
  • Date: 27/1/2005


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