28 May EU-US summit

Date: 05/06/1997

THE biannual summit between US President Bill Clinton, European Commission President Jacques Santer and Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok, which coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Marshall Plan, gave a high-level stamp of approval to agreements on chemical precursors for drugs, the fight against drug trafficking in the Caribbean and customs cooperation.

CLINTON announced a joint EU-US award programme for people and organisations who promote democracy in the countries of central and eastern Europe (CEECs). Responding to US pressure for more European support for the region, Santer pointed out that the Union was providing around 150 billion ecu this decade (twice that under the Marshall Plan), and planned to welcome “central and eastern European countries as members of the European Union”.

THE US president argued that the CEECs still needed more help, pledged support for that and backed calls by Kok for a new Marshall Plan for the new democracies. “We cannot simply say to these countries, we want you to be for democracy and we want you to support economic reform and good luck, because there is an enormous gap between the poorest countries on the continent and those that are not.” Kok and Clinton both stressed that the new plan needed to focus more on mobilising private investment than using taxpayers' money.

THE EU agreed to join the US, Japan and South Korea in the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO). Both sides agreed on standards of veterinary inspections, “thus preventing a trade conflict that might otherwise have arisen on the export of meat products”, said Kok. They also gave a high-level push to the flagging talks on mutual recognition of goods and standards between the two trade blocs.

LEADERS celebrated agreements over the past six months on trade in information technology and telecommunications worth in the region of 1 trillion ecu. Representatives from the Transatlantic Business Dialogue presented the leaders with a list of demands, including a clear road map to creating a transatlantic market-place.