Poultry frozen out of successful U.S.-EU trade talks
U.S. and European Union negotiators on Friday said they had made substantial progress cutting red tape in a number of areas that constrict trade between their two trading systems, but the head of the U.S. delegation expressed deep frustration that the EU still refuses to lift a ban on U.S. poultry products.
'We're frustrated that we're not shipping chickens today,' said Allan Hubbard, director of the White House's National Economic Council, at a State Department press briefing following the first meeting of the Transatlantic Economic Council in Washington.
The dispute goes back to 1997 when the EU blocked the importation of poultry produced in the United States because of safety concerns surrounding pathogen reduction treatment — essentially a chlorine bath — used in slaughter plants to disinfect poultry of harmful bacteria. The ban applies to other agricultural products treated this way too.
U.S. officials believe that the EU has reneged on a deal in 2001 to allow imports of U.S. poultry, in exchange for accepting Clementine tangerines from Spain.
Hubbard said the chlorine treatment is used in Europe to treat surgical instruments and other items, and that since the processing is done in the United States there is no environmental impact in Europe.
He urged EU officials to base their decision on science, not protectionism.
'Poultry farmers in Europe don't want to compete with poultry farmers of the United States, so they are using this as an excuse,' he said.
Guenther Verheugen, vice president of the EU Commission, has agreed to redouble efforts to resolve the dispute, Hubbard claimed.
President Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who holds the rotating EU presidency, committed at a summit in April to press their respective governments to reduce barriers to trade. The United States and Europe account for 60 percent of the world's Gross Domestic Product and business leaders believe the elimination of non-tariff barriers could increase productivity among the two trading blocs by 3 percent.
The Transatlantic Economic Council is a political steering board that sets priorities and coordinates the efforts of the various agencies and institutions to ease regulatory burdens.
The political guidance from the top of government has helped solve seemingly technical issues that have languished for years.
Since April, the two sides have made substantial progress in 19 areas, including agreeing on a road map, or timetable, for reaching mutual recognition of their respective supply chain security programs, harmonized accounting standards, introducing legislation in the EU Parliament to allow the importation of products labeled with both English and metric measurements, and common standards for biodiesel fuel, officials said.
Senior policy-makers said they also intend to accelerate cooperation on import safety.
According to the Financial Times, the Transatlantic Council is serving as the breeding ground for an ambitious round of bilateral deal-making in which all trade disputes between the two economies will be laid on the table and traded off in a series of compromises that would basically sacrifice positions of some national industries in order to win other disputes.
Officials told the paper they see a chance next year to get Boeing and Airbus to settle their dispute over airline subsidies now before the World Trade Organization.
Poultry frozen out of successful U.S.-EU trade talks
