Tag: EU-US relations

EU trade ministers on Thursday (18 April) set an end-of-June deadline to reach an accord on the mandate to start negotiating a transatlantic trade and investment partnership that is strongly backed by EU leaders and US President Barack Obama.

Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic have given the green light to start negotiations for a free trade agreement establishing the largest economic alliance in the world, which already accounts for some €455bn in trade and millions of jobs.

With President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney continuing to run neck-and-neck in the US presidential race, analysts in Washington are seriously considering whether a recount on 7 November will be necessary. The consequence could be far-reaching for Europe, which is waiting until the US vote to take a decision on debt-laden Greece.

SPECIAL REPORT / Companies on both sides of the Atlantic have urged EU and US policymakers to negotiate a ‘realistic’ trade and investment agreement that not only benefits their economies, but serves as a model for the rest of the world.

Barack Obama may be the "least European" president in fifty years, but the US recognises the need for partnership with the EU, according to a senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. EurActiv France reports.

The EU and the US are set to discuss their recent foreign and economic policy differences when they meet in Lisbon on 20 November, on the margins of a NATO summit, the European Commission announced yesterday (17 August).

The EU may piggyback on US efforts to measure the impact of research spending, as Europe struggles to find more reliable ways to assess the return on its investment in science.

The European Commission today (17 February) confirmed the appointment of Portuguese João Vale de Almeida as the EU's new ambassador to the USA.

The ongoing financial turmoil and cooperation on climate change will shape relations between the EU and the US after the 4 November presidential elections, argues Tom Spencer, the executive director of the European Centre for Public Affairs, in an interview with EurActiv.

"There is a new window of opportunity to rebuild relations between the US and the EU as the Bush era draws to a close," according to Ronald D. Asmus, executive director of the Brussels-based Transatlantic Centre, a think tank.

"The vocation of Europe in the course of the 21^st century is to become the lever of step-by-step intercontinental convergence and unification," writes former Belgian Prime Minister Mark Eyskens in an August paper for Europe's World, claiming that one must look to the future "to understand Europe's current choices".

A new chapter offered by the election of President Sarkozy in France and the elevation of Gordon Brown to UK prime minister provides a chance of better transatlantic relations over Iran and energy security, claims Simon Henderson – director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Programme at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy – in a June essay for the Transatlantic Institute.

As opposition to more trade liberalisation grows in the US Congress, MEPs have voted for a transatlantic market without barriers to be implemented within the next ten years.

The Parliament has set up a temporary committee to inquire into alleged CIA detention centres and covert prisoner flights in Europe. In addition, MEPs adopted a resolution calling for the Guantánamo detention centre to be shut down.

With alleged CIA prisons in Europe in the focus of European interest, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is failing, on her tour of European capitals in December 2005, to raise attention for transatlantic co-operation.

Two months after the country's inconclusive elections, Germany's grand coalition has voted Angela Merkel into office as the first woman head of government in German history.

Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding is on the offensive in the dispute with the US about governance of the internet, evoking the spectre of the internet falling apart.

US President Bush managed to seduce NATO and EU leaders during his visit in Brussels, but differences remain over China's arms embargo, Iran and climate change

EU transport ministers have agreed on the deployment and operational phases of the European Global Navigation Satellite System programmes.

In the final EU-US Summit of President Clinton's term of office it is again trade issues that top the agenda.