We are all Europeans today!

Around a quarter of a century ago, one of my favorite magazine (woops! sorry, newspaper), The Economist's, cover showed the stars from the EU flag all crashed on the ground. As I recall it was the breakup of the European Currency Rate Mechanism. All was lost, the single market dreams were over. Well they were not, the stars rose back up again and we stand at the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. Bravo.

Happy Birthday EU--we are all Europeans today.

US & EU should focus on light bulbs!

I've long been of the opinion that it will be easier to renegotiate a new transatlantic-alliance if we approach the process as a series of projects, each designed to achieve a tangible result, rather than a big bang to pull the erstwhile allies together again. That was the successful Schuman approach to create the EU from nation states that had fought each other for centuries.

Here is a project that should have wide support on both sides of the Atlantic: The elimination of incandescent light bulbs on both sides of the Atlantic.

These are the light bulbs that most of us use; they were invented in the 19th. century and are very energy inefficient. The EU has just decided to phase them out by 2009. This will save EU citizens billions of euros in fuel bills per year, and also 20 million tons of carbon emissions.
Among the manufacturers of light bulbs that have agreed to this EU initiative is General Electric, headquartered in the U.S.

So here is my suggestion: President Bush should send a Cabinet Secretary to Brussels and join the EU project to banish these old Victorian era bulbs in the EU and America. Elimination of incandescent light bulbs will conserve a signifiant amount of energy, reduce carbon emission, and generate transatlantic goodwill.

If a salve is needed to soothe U.S. anti-green conservatives: Australia, that stalwart American ally, this year passed a law to ban the old light bulbs by 2009, in fact it was Australia's decision that inspired the EU.

It is, as they say in America, a no-brainer.

EU-US single market moves ahead?

The US and EU could set a date for the creation of a transatlantic trading zone at a summit in April 2007, the Financial Times reported a few days ago. This would be progress indeed, and is a tribute to the strategic thinking of Germany's Chancellor Merkel who proposed this initiative and has moved it to the top of the transatlantic agenda.

As the the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has succinctly put it: "The EU and US are each other's main trading partners. Our economies represent 58 percent of Global GDP and 37 percent of world trade....a genuine transatlantic marketplace could increase GDP in both the EU and the US by more than 3 percent." The American ambassador to the the EU declared that the US President and his cabinet are politically committed to this project.

The political relationship between the EU and the US is in intensive care, continued efforts to strengthen the business ties will buy the politicians on both sides time to re-discover the importance of the transatlantic alliance.

2007 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome that began the powerful European common market. Let's celebrate by initiating concrete steps to move ahead with a transatlantic common market.