Long-term significance of New Transatlantic Agenda

Date: 14/11/1996

MANY observers have concluded that the New Transatlantic Agenda, signed with much fanfare at the EU-US summit in Madrid on 3 December 1995, has been a failure and that serious rifts are appearing in the transatlantic relationship.

As a former official in the Clinton Administration who was closely involved in the elaboration of the agenda, I share in the disappointment that not more has been achieved towards carrying out some of the joint actions set forth therein.

But it is important to recall that the agenda was intended to be an ambitious project to take the already close EU-US relationship to qualitatively new levels over the long term, rather than a short-term panacea for occasional transatlantic frictions.

The agenda should therefore be judged on its long-term potential rather than on its mixed record thus far.

The fact that this record is mixed should not obscure the significant progress which has been achieved in several areas.

It appears likely that the US and the EU will agree to eliminate tariffs on information technology products in advance of the 9 December World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Singapore.

At a recent meeting of the 'Quad' (US, EU, Japan and Canada) in Seattle, an accord was reached on the modalities of Union participation in the US-Japan semiconductor agreement.

Although the US and the EU are still having difficulty concluding a Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) on pharmaceutical products, the two sides are close to striking deals covering telecommunications and information technology equipment, electrical and electronic products, and recreational craft.

Progress has also been made towards reaching accords on science and technology cooperation, veterinary equivalence, customs cooperation and the control of chemical precursors used in narcotics.

The most significant impact of the agenda, however, will be over the longer term. In my opinion, there are four main reasons for believing that it will be substantial.

Perhaps most important is the fact that the agenda has led to a 'widening' and 'deepening' of contacts between US and EU officials.

Before the launch of the agenda, consultations remained concentrated between a few insti-tutional actors: the Directorate-General for external economic relations (DGI) of the European Commission and the foreign ministry of the country holding the EU presidency on the Union side, and the White House, department of state, department of commerce and the office of the US trade representative on the US side.

Examples of the wider contacts encouraged by the agenda include the cooperation between the US department of education and the Commission's Directorate-General for human resources, education, training and youth (DGXXII), leading to an agreement on higher education and vocational training signed in December 1995 between US Education Secretary Robert Reilly and Commissioner Edith Cresson.

Cooperation between the US department of labour and the Directorate-General for employment, industrial relations and social affairs (DGV) led to the signing of a memorandum of understanding by Secretary of Labour Robert Reich and Commissioner Pádraig Flynn, launching a EU-US working group on labour and employment issues.

The 'widening' of transatlantic contacts is particularly significant because it will enrich the dialogue and create new constituencies for EU-US cooperation.

The agenda has also led to more contacts at deeper levels than has previously been the case.

In addition to the traditional encounters at head of state, ministerial and trade negotiator levels, the agenda has generated regular meetings in the senior level group between under-secretaries and political directors and between mid-ranking officials who carry out the bulk of the day-to-day work set forth in the agenda.

Secondly, it has altered the tone and substance of transatlantic contacts.

The Helms-Burton and the d'Amato laws have, of course, been the subject of strong criticism in the EU. However, frictions over this legislation, as well as over the implementation of peace plans in Bosnia and the Middle East, obscure the fact that the US and the EU are talking to one another more intensively than ever before.

In its report to the June 1996 summit, the senior level group reported that “a new spirit of cooperation and commitment to joint action pervades the relationship”.

This was not simply public relations. Before the launch of the agenda in December 1995, transatlantic consultations tended to be briefing sessions given by US officials for their European counterparts, with little substantive dialogue and even less follow-up.

By engaging both the US and the EU in a common enterprise of long-term perspective and broad scope, the agenda has generated a true exchange of views and has strengthened the reflexes of officials to think in terms of transatlantic rather than purely national interests and objectives.

Thirdly, the agenda has vastly increased the range of areas for transatlantic cooperation. Whereas consultations used to be focused principally on contentious issues of bilateral trade, the areas in which the US and the EU have pledged to take joint action cover a vast spectrum: security, international trade, the environment, science, health, education and humanitarian assistance and development, to name just a few.

These issues are noteworthy because they are of global rather than just transatlantic interest. Moreover, some of the regions of the world towards which the US and the EU have pledged to coordinate their foreign policies - such as the Middle East and Russia - are significant because they have been the source of serious transatlantic disputes in the past.

The US and Europe have often pursued divergent policies with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict and Russia. At certain moments, including during the Yom Kippur war and former US President Ronald Reagan's effort to impose sanctions on European companies participating in the construction of the Siberian pipeline, these divergences have severely strained the transatlantic relationship.

Many of the other regions of the world towards which the United States and the EU have pledged in the agenda to coordinate their foreign policies - such as Central America, the Caribbean and the Horn of Africa - have never previously been the target of systematic transatlantic cooperation.

Finally, unlike the 1990 Transatlantic Declaration and other agreements between the US and Europe, the agenda was conceived as a flexible document whose action plan would be regularly modified at every EU-US summit to reflect progress achieved since the previous discussions, the current context of transatlantic relations and different priorities for action in the future.

The flexibility of the agenda, coupled with the task of the senior level group to monitor EU-US relations and to update and revise priorities for consideration at the biannual summits, enable both sides to devote as much attention to conflict prevention through 'early warning' as to conflict resolution.

It may therefore succeed in taking EU-US relations well beyond the sterile model of ad hoc summit meetings and make transatlantic relations more responsive to changing concerns and events, as well as more immediately relevant to the lives of individuals.

Both the US and the EU need to bear in mind that their relationship is - and will remain - central to the key economic and political challenges facing those on both sides of the Atlantic into the next century.

The New Transatlantic Agenda has charted the course for a more effective transatlantic partnership to cope better with those challenges.

Progress under the agenda toward closer transatlantic relations will not always be linear or rapid; occasional disputes will continue to arise.

But by keeping the transitory issues which divide them in the perspective of those wider, more significant and enduring interests which bind them together, the US and the EU will be more likely to fulfil the great promise contained in the agenda.

Anthony Gardner, an attorney with Hogan & Hartson in Brussels, served as director for European affairs in the European directorate of the National Security Council between 1994 and 1995. He is also the author of a forthcoming book: “A New Era in US-EU Relations? The Clinton Administration and the New Transatlantic Agenda”.