U.S., EU business groups lobby for uniform rules

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its European counterpart have joined in a formal alliance to lobby a new U.S.-European Union entity tasked with harmonizing trans-Atlantic business regulations.

The organizations of large U.S. and European companies devised the alliance, known as the Global Regulatory Cooperation Project, as a means of unifying their efforts to promote business-friendly policies in fields such as intellectual property, antitrust enforcement, investment rules and regulatory standards.

{mosads}The U.S. Chamber partnered with BusinessEurope, a Brussels, Belgium-based coalition of trade associations, to create the body in response to the formation earlier this year of the joint U.S.-EU Transatlantic Economic Council.

The Transatlantic Economic Council emerged from the April U.S.-EU summit in Washington through an agreement between President Bush, German Chancellor and European Council President Angela Merkel and European Commission (EC) President José Manuel Barroso of Portugal.

One of the principal goals laid out in the agreement is to “encourage other countries to adopt the transatlantic economic model of respect for property rights, openness to investment, transparency and predictability in regulation, and the value of free markets.”

The council is composed of officials from the United States and EU member countries and is co-chaired by White House National Economic Council Director Al Hubbard and Güenter Verheugen of Germany, the European commissioner for industry and commerce and an EC vice president.

According to press reports, the U.S.-EU entity will focus on regulations of automobiles, cosmetics and medical products.

The U.S. Chamber announced its alliance with BusinessEurope at a briefing yesterday that included remarks from Hubbard and five other Bush administration officials, along with an executive from the United Parcel Service (UPS).

The business communities on both sides of the Atlantic are in constant pursuit of harmonized regulatory environments in the United States, the European Union and elsewhere.

Although U.S. businesses have enjoyed numerous victories on regulatory harmony via trade agreements, the U.S. Chamber maintains that some countries implement rules that run contrary to the agreements and stand as “de facto barriers to trade,” according to a document released by the group.

“There has been little success in addressing the regulatory barriers that exist between the U.S. and Europe, the two largest commercial markets in the world,” Global Regulatory Cooperation Project Chairman Stanton Anderson, a U.S. Chamber official, said in a written statement.

“The U.S. and its major trading partners must work to open markets and improve the flow of trade and investment through a vigorous agenda of enhanced reform and cooperation,” U.S. Chamber President and Chief Executive Tom Donohue said.

“We will apply the appropriate political pressure,” BusinessEurope President Ernest-Antoine Seillère said.

The Chamber and its European ally hope to press the White House to take a more active role in international regulatory issues, in part by creating an office tasked with coordinating the efforts of various federal agencies.

Through the Global Regulatory Cooperation Project, the business community also plans to spell out more precisely what the “de facto barriers” are and to calculate their costs.

The U.S. Chamber-BusinessEurope venture will be overseen by a steering committee consisting of representatives from financial services, software, telecommunications, shipping, manufacturing and pharmaceutical companies. Fifteen companies have seats on the committee, including AIG, Microsoft, AT&T, UPS, Caterpillar and Pfizer.