Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-31-Speech-3-104"
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"en.20060531.13.3-104"2
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".
Mr President, I want to thank Erika Mann for having shepherded this very impressive report through Parliament with her characteristic effectiveness, dedication and attention to detail; it is very timely.
The signature of the long-awaited air services agreement, as well as the agreement on civil aviation safety, is now expected during the second half of the year. On the air services agreement, we will have to keep pushing the US Government to go ahead with the rule-making changes and resist protectionist pressure from Congress. Your help in this House will be most valuable to us in pursuing this goal.
I welcome your continued interest in a more visionary and strategic approach – I happen to think that there is a place for vision in politics. I note your call for the 2006 EU-US Summit to design a new transatlantic partnership agreement that leads to the achievement of a barrier-free transatlantic market by 2015. In my view, the EU-US economic initiative has shown that we are getting there, we are moving in that direction step by step.
Probably the right approach is to advance steadily on issues of mutual interest and to show – for example in the areas of intellectual property rights and regulatory cooperation – concrete successes to our citizens. We have to earn our way in our acceptance of the approach that I know is supported in the report. I think this pragmatic approach will be assured of support because in reality there is no US enthusiasm – either in the Administration or in Congress – for any ‘bigger bang’ EU-US scheme. On issues like investment and public procurement, which you rightly identify as areas of enormous potential – and they do have very great potential indeed – the US has not so far shown any interest in tackling bilateral barriers.
On the investment side, the Dubai Ports fallout requires careful handling. We have now at least established a contact group to address both old and new problems, and have proposed to the US government to include an investment paragraph in the summit declaration regarding the importance of an open transatlantic investment climate. This should send a strong message to the US Congress, which is currently debating the Shelby bill on the tightening of the Exon-Florio Statute. Again, your continued help on this, along with that of the US Congress, would be much appreciated.
Finally I would like to point out that we have had a very good first half of the year clearing out some important EU-US trade disputes on Foreign Sales Corporations, on Byrd, on the telecoms sanctions – I hope we can keep up the momentum in other areas. I am looking at two other disputes particularly at the moment to see whether they are susceptible to early resolution. FSC and Byrd prove that the WTO dispute settlement system works and that the availability of WTO-compatible sanctions can be an efficient way of obtaining US implementation of WTO judgments. Given the good results of the WTO system, I do not see at this stage the need for the kind of formal bilateral trade dispute settlement mechanism which you propose in your report, but I do not want to reject the idea completely. Be assured that we will exhaust all our informal channels with the United States and try everything possible to avoid going down the expensive and time-consuming route to Geneva, whenever this is avoidable.
In conclusion, let me say that the transatlantic relationship is one which is too often simply taken for granted. Especially at this time, what we need is renewed commitment in order to make it work better. I am grateful for your report, which has highlighted this need once again in a very timely way.
The fact that the very comprehensive report on transatlantic economic relations has the input of half a dozen committees of this Parliament, and that it would need at least the same number of Commissioners present to discuss all the issues that are covered in it, shows how deep and intricate the EU-US economic relationship is.
That relationship effectively operates at two levels. On one level, steady leadership is required to promote a further convergence of our shared economic rules and regulatory frameworks – our companies, our jobs and our competitiveness demand this. At the other level, what happens in the rest of the world also depends on whether and how the EU and the US are able to react to events together.
No political relationship in our time is of greater importance to the global economy than the Transatlantic Partnership. The response to the rise of China and India, the pressures of globalisation, the current challenges in the energy field, the way multilateral institutions function, climate change: all these depend on the ability of Europe and the United States to cooperate effectively together.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the continuing WTO negotiations. I am fortunate to have had a shared sense of purpose with my counterpart Rob Portman, and I look forward to continuing this with Susan Schwab, the new US Trade Representative – I hope she will be confirmed shortly by the Senate.
It is no secret that I think the European Union and the United States need to bring our positions in the Doha round closer together. The warning bell is ringing on the DDA. The danger lights are flashing, because if the gaps are not closed in the coming weeks, we will face serious institutional, legislative and political obstacles to ending this round.
The United States will shortly swing into election mode, trade authority is set to lapse, there are electoral constraints in other parts of the world too – a coming election in Brazil, for example. The window on the Doha round is closing rapidly. Europe is ready to negotiate further; we have indicated our flexibility, and no sector is out of bounds to us. We look to our partners to express the same sense of purpose and openness.
Let me say a few words now on Erika Mann’s report itself. I am glad that it shows strong support for the work programmes adopted last November to implement the EU-US economic initiative. In the progress report which we will present to the next summit on 21 June, we will be able to list some good achievements. The EU-US action strategy for intellectual property rights enforcement in third countries will be endorsed. It will contain a number of concrete cooperation measures, especially between our customs services and embassies in selected third countries.
On the high-level regulatory cooperation forum, too, I am satisfied that after two meetings in Brussels and Washington within a very short timeframe, we have now clearly established the forum as the place for EU and US regulators to exchange best practice. We hope very much that the benefits of increased cooperation will soon be felt by companies on both sides of the Atlantic."@en1
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