EU and America on course for free trade area ‘by 2010’

By Dana Spinant

Date: 26/02/04

A TRANSATLANTIC free trade area could bind together the EU and the United States by 2010, a senior Washington politician has predicted.

Speaking exclusively to European Voice, Doug Bereuter, chairman of the Europe sub-committee in the US Congress, said that such a development "is conceivable and desirable".

However, he added, "I had predicted, a decade ago, that by 2004 we would have such a free trade area: it was way too optimistic".

Bereuter is the second politician to openly call for an EU-US free trade pact - Spanish premier José María Aznar had put forward the same idea while visiting Washington last month.

But Bereuter insists that the world's top two economic blocs should first concentrate on reviving the Doha Round of trade liberalization talks and reforming the World Trade Organization (WTO) system.

The congressman launched a scathing attack on the EU's farm subsidies, warning that if it wants to save the Doha Round, the Union must dismantle the "devastating subsidies it gives to its farmers". He is adamant the onus is on the EU to unblock the talks.

"If we expect them [developing countries] to open their markets for our services or hi-tech products, they say they are right to say 'not until you open your agricultural markets'.

"We don't mind how much they [EU states] pay per cow, double than the average of the money Africans get; that's their business.

"But they should delink it from production."

Bereuter thinks that working together on reforming the WTO and the "obsolete structures" of the United Nations would help improve relations between the two sides of the Atlantic, damaged by the bitter bickering surrounding the war in Iraq.

He warned that "attitudinal gaps between Europe and the US" have led many Europeans to have negative feelings "about America, the American government and Americans".

He blames this on "differences over foreign policy, over the treatment of multilateral institutions", but also on the press, education and on failures "in American public diplomacy".

In addition, he claimed Europe suffers from a "Gulliver complex" and has a naturaltendency to try to hold back the American superpower.bister Bertie Ahern and scheduled for 25-26 June, the Dublin government announced yesterday (25 February).

But critics of the US military occupation of Iraq promptly described the visit as an attempt to curry favour with the mammoth Irish-American community ahead of November's presidential election.

Dublin Socialist MEP Proinsias de Rossa dubbed the invitation to Bush "an affront to the 100,000 Irish people who, just a year ago, marched against US aggression in Iraq".

Foreign Minister Brian Cowen, meanwhile, said a joint EU-US plan to combat AIDS could be on the summit's agenda.

Report of an interview with Doug Bereuter, Chairman of the Europe Sub-Committee in the US Congress.