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.