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.

U.S. missiles negotiations with Poland & Czech Republic a bad idea

Here we go again, playing off the divisive "old-Europe" and "new-Europe" neoconservative scorecard.

What else to make of the American initiative to try and place anti-missile systems in Europe by working through Poland and the Czech Republic. If the threat from missiles launched from the Middle East and/or North Korea is real (and I believe it is prudent to consider this threat to U.S. and EU security) would it not have been better to deal at the U.S.--EU level rather than with individual states in Europe? The former approach carried the risk of longer negotiations but would force EU wide discussion of this important security issue, which would result in a far stronger agreement, especially in the face of growing Russian opposition and criticism from Germany.

Ofcourse there is always a risk that EU public opinion would not be convinced that the risks of a rogue missile attack outwiegh the benefits, but isn't that a risk worth taking? As it is, public opposition and the razor thin parliamentary balance in the Czech Republic might well derail the plan and another opportunity to strengthen defenses and begin to rebuild the transatlantic alliance by recognizing the desire of Europeans for ever-closer union will been lost.

NATO: Corpse on a horse?

U.S. President George W Bush has called on other NATO members to step up their battle against Afghanistan's Taliban. He said that NATO had to hold true to its founding principle - "an attack on one is an attack on all."

This must have come as a real surprise to NATO members. Immediately after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 NATO, for the first time in its history, invoked Article 5 of its Charter—the one that states “an attack on one is an attack on all,” and offered to fight shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. as it prepared for war in Afghanistan. A magnanimous gesture, that was immediately rejected by the U.S. The American side felt NATO was ill prepared to fight a real war and would be more of a hindrance than a help. After spending billions of dollars and an enormous amount of political capital to keep NATO going, the first time the organization wanted to march into war it was judged incompetent.

If this is the entity on which the future of Afghanistan now depends, I’d say the Afghanis ought to be really concerned about their future security! I can just see the Taliban shaking in their boots.

Does anyone out there disagree with me and still believes NATO can save Afghanistan?

More importantly: do we still need NATO?

Bravo! Chancellor Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants the EU and the U.S. to establish a single market through the harmonisation of EU and U.S. regulations on financial instruments and goods. This is an excellent idea and the American side should welcome it.

The $3 trillion EU-U.S. economy's depth and complexity has kept the transatlantic alliance from fraying further, so anything that strengthens these ties should be embraced.

Realizing that trade negotiations are stuck in the Doha round's machinations, Chancellor Merkel wisely proposed the two sides side-step these contentious issues and focus instead on making the financial and business infrastructure and plumbing work more smoothly. " Ms Merkel said she wanted to create a single market for investors, with common rules on intellectual property, financial regulation and even car emissions," The Guardian reported. "German experts believe a single EU/US financial market could be created by 2015, cutting trading costs by 60% and the cost of capital by 9%," the paper said.

"I feel it is very important that trans-Atlantic economic relations are intensified," the German newspaper Der Spiegel's blog reported from her keynote speech in Davos. "History shows that close trans-Atlantic economic integration is always the impetus for boosting economic growth," she said.

The Chancellor cited European investment in the American rail network in the 19th century and the post-World War II Marshall Plan as examples of successful trans-Atlantic integration. "The U.S. is still the European Union's most important trade partner, as it was in the past," she said. "We are also the most important investment partners for each other."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she wants to see "ever-closer economic co-operation" between the 27-nation EU and the U.S.", reported the BBC. The EU has achieved its historic success by working on an ever closer union, and Ms. Merkel astutely recognized that calling for a "big-bang" approach to U.S.-EU economic cooperation would be a difficult undertaking, but moving ahead a project at a time is a proven recipe for success, as the EU has demonstrated over the last 50 years.

All this was a prelude to the Chancellor's Washington, D.C. meeting with President Bush on January 13, 2007.

By all accounts the two leaders got along well. It would have been nice to see a high-level EU-U.S. working group set up to move Ms. Merkel's proposal to action. Perhaps this can still happen. All those who are concerned about the future of the transatlantic alliance should be calling their political representatives; business leaders ought to be up front supporting Ms. Merkel's initiative. American media needs to explain the importance of this development for American and European jobs and standards of living, and for strengthening the the EU-U.S. alliance.

My EU/US views on public radio

On Friday, January 19, 2007, Laura Knoy, host of The Exchange on New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR) invited me to discuss my book on her call-in radio program that is heard by upwards of 150,000 listeners in New Hampshire, Vermont, and the Boston area of Massachusetts. You may listen to the program on an MP3 player, or a Microsoft Windows Player.

The EU's investment in America is enormous (over $3 Trillion, ie. for my European readers, $3,000 billion) and spread throughout America. For example, over a billion dollars have come to my home state of Vermont (population: 625,000) and the investment supports 7,200 jobs, more than half of which are in manufacturing. It was interesting to engage with the bright and informed audience that called in to question me as you'll hear.