‘No real value’ to calls for free trade area

Date: 25/03/04

By Karen Carstens

THE leader of the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) has discarded calls to create an EU-US free trade area as being “without any great value” and pleaded instead for an “open business community” between the two sides of the Atlantic.

Niall FitzGerald, Unilever chairman and co-chair of the TABD, said the forum, gathering business representatives from Europe and America, aims to promote “a barrier-free transatlantic trade community within a multilateral context”.

He insisted on creating a framework which is “helpful to a multilateral agenda”.

Speaking to European Voice, the Irishman warned that “the first real test” for the revamped TransAtlantic Business Dialogue would be June's EU-US summit in Ireland.

He said the TABD will present to American and European leaders a set of recommendations on boosting transatlantic economic relations which the forum hopes the government leaders “will take seriously”.

Due to be finalized by mid-April, the proposals are being drafted by some 25 working groups under the supervision of an 'executive board' headed up by FitzGerald and Coca-Cola chairman Douglas Daft, the forum's two co-chairs.

At the top of the list of the TABD's recommendations will be “renewed momentum in the [World Trade Organization] Doha development round”, intellectual property protection, capital markets, notably staving off the formation of two segregated capital markets, regulatory convergence, corporate governance, international accounting standards and maximizing open trade and security.

“We will ask them [the governments] to take the recommendations seriously,” FitzGerald said, during a Brussels stopover on Monday (22 March).

“There is a strong political drive to make this work. But the real test will be in June.”

He was quick to add that he had no reason to doubt that both EU and US policymakers take the TABD seriously, especially since they had used the June 2003 EU-US summit in Washington to breathe new life into the initiative.

“We are looking at what practical proposals can be made,” said FitzGerald.

The 'old TABD', by contrast, spread itself too thin and “got a little lost in the sectoral issues, now we want to cover broad areas relevant to industry”.

“There was a lot of detailed activity and not a lot of action.

“Now we'd like less detail and more action.”

And if anyone has any “important sectoral issues they wish to bring to the table”, that can only be addressed in a second phase, after an initial six months of frenzied activity culminating in the June summit, he suggested.

And the enthusiasm in both the Bush administration and the current European Commission couldn't be better, according to FitzGerald.

Europe and the US account for 40% of world gross domestic product and more than a third of global trade.

Niall FitzGerald, Co-Chair of the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue, feels there is no need to create a European Union-United States free trade area and pleaded instead for an 'open business community' between the two sides of the Atlantic.