The EU-Commission has published a proposal entitled «A New EU-US agenda for global change» which is a twelve-page text proposing to upgrade EU-US cooperation in areas of common public interest, health, technology, strategy and security (https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/joint-communication-eu-us-agenda_en.pdf)
Initially presenting the joint achievements to date e.g. that the EU-US is home to about 1bn people and that they are the two largest blocks of the most developed democracies on the planet. That together they make up a third of the world’s GDP and trade and 60% of foreign direct investment. And that together they have gone so far as to define regulations and criteria adopted by all other countries.
by Thanos S. Chonthrogiannis
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The design of the new transatlantic agenda for global cooperation was based on the common values, interests respectively and global influence shared by the EU and the US.
The issues addressed in the proposed agenda concern how the combined global power and influence of the two countries remains incomparable and how it can be transformed into world domination and leadership in areas such as health and combating pandemics, environmental protection and prosperity in general on the planet, transatlantic trade, technological cooperation, democracy, economy, global security and china’s shared response.
In this proposed plan, the EU, to create an appropriate ground for consultation with the US, argues that it intends to avoid any unilateral actions on its part to impose taxation on American digital giants until a mutually acceptable solution is found between them.
In addition, there is talk of supporting US President-elect Joe Biden’s proposal for a summit of democratic countries to find a common step between countries-Democracies that share the same values, ideas, and political philosophy.
In any case, this EU proposal is in the right direction, but the final result will be determined on whether both the EU and the US are prepared to take several steps back in the discussions between them on the settlement of their differences. Such basic differences are:
1. The technological dominance of the US at the expense of the EU’s interests.
2. The reluctance of the EU, and in particular Germany, to make a sufficient contribution to financing defence spending and strengthening NATO.
3. The EU’s reluctance to create a framework including the possibility of military intervention on its part to control for its benefit any geopolitical developments in its region, thus replacing the withdrawal of US troops from various regions of the world around the EU (North Africa, Middle East, etc.).
4. The large trade surplus of the EU and especially of Germany at the expense of the US.
We believe that the administration of the new US President Joe Biden will respond positively to the EU’s call, but whether consensus will be reached in practice will depend on whether the EU and the US are prepared to retreat to their original positions to agree on everything.
