U.S.-EU JOINT STATEMENT OF THE TRADE & TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL (TTC)

USPA NEWS - The U.S Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, and U.S Trade Representative Katherine Tai, and Jose W. Fernandez was confirmed by the Senate as Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, met in Saclay (Suburbs of Paris) France, on 16 May 2022. They held this high level meeting amid TTC, with European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, and European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, joined by European Commissioner Thierry Breton, for the second time, (The 1st TTC (Trade and Technology Council ) Meeting was held in Pittsburg, 2021), and hosted by the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The President of Chambre of Commerce of …and U.S secretary Fernandez, attended also the meeting, before answering the press in a press conference,
The U.S and EU’s representatives issued the following Joint Statement on behalf of the United States of America and the European Union, which intend to formalize recently accelerated efforts to align their work on export controls, in a very particular context of Ukraine’s war shadow, according to officials. We publish the full text of the Joint statement, as it was delivered.

The U.S Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, and U.S Trade Representative Katherine Tai, and Jose W. Fernandez was confirmed by the Senate as Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, met in Saclay (Suburbs of Paris) France, on 16 May 2022. They held this high level meeting amid TTC, with European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, and European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, joined by European Commissioner Thierry Breton, for the second time, (The 1st TTC (Trade and Technology Council ) Meeting was held in Pittsburg, 2021), and hosted by the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The President of Chambre of Commerce of …and U.S secretary Fernandez, attended also the meeting, before answering the press in a press conference, The U.S and EU’s representatives issued the following Joint Statement on behalf of the United States of America and the European Union, which intend to formalize recently accelerated efforts to align their work on export controls, in a very particular context of Ukraine’s war shadow, according to officials. We publish the full text of the Joint statement, as it was delivered. The main takeaway from this second session of TTC is the statement (forty pages) of American and European Officials aligned to first denounce Russia's military aggression as an "invasion premeditated and unprovoked" in violation of all international laws. Washington and Brussels pledge to "rebuild the economy" of Ukraine. In the face of the consequences of the conflict, "we will cooperate closely to secure our supply chains and strengthen global food security. We will build on our transatlantic coordination […] on export controls to Russia to continue harmonizing our approaches in this critical area, while boosting trade with Ukraine,” Valdis said in a statement. Dombrovskis, Vice-President of the European Commission. We publish the full texte of the Joint statement as it was delivered by U.S State of Department and U.S state of Commerce.

We, the co-chairs of the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council (“TTC”), United States Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai, European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, and European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, joined by European Commissioner Thierry Breton, held the second meeting of the Trade and Technology Council in Paris-Saclay on 16 May 2022, hosted by the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, and issued the following Joint Statement on behalf of the United States of America and the European Union: U.S.-EU JOINT STATEMENT OF THE TRADE & TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL (TTC)

1. The U.S.-EU partnership is a cornerstone of our shared strength, prosperity, and commitment to freedom, democracy, and respect for human rights. In the past year, we have strengthened, deepened, and elevated our relationship. As recent events have proven, strong transatlantic bonds and cooperation on issues related to trade, technology, and security are more important than ever.
2. The world has changed dramatically since the first TTC meeting in Pittsburgh on 29 September 2021. The United States and European Union strongly condemn Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine, as a premeditated and unprovoked further invasion of a sovereign state in violation of international law, which threatens the multilateral rules-based order. The United States and the European Union support the Ukrainian people and their right to choose their own future.

3. The United States and the European Union remain committed to upholding Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity. We have cooperated closely to impose significant consequences on Russia for its continued aggression against Ukraine. The foundation that we cemented through the TTC was indispensable for fostering the unprecedented level of cooperation on export controls and sanctions in response to Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine, both between the United States and European Union and with other allies and partners.

4. We plan to continue coordinating our actions to mitigate the negative impacts of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine on the global economy, and on Ukraine’s economy in particular. We remain resolute in our efforts to work jointly with Ukraine to rebuild its economy and revive its entrepreneurial vigour, facilitate trade and investment, and address global challenges resulting from Russia’s actions. This includes addressing supply chain ruptures created by Russia’s aggression, with regard to industrial and food commodities. The TTC intends to develop common approaches and explore shared solutions toward improving supply chain resiliency, fostering predictability and trade diversification.

5. We confirm that we will continue to oppose actors who threaten the multilateral rules-based order and fundamental principles of international law. To protect our citizens, we will draw upon our bilateral trade and investment relations, our joint technology leadership, the transatlantic security partnership, and our shared democratic values. Our cooperation and coordination in the TTC are essential to this effort, and we are committed to maintaining the TTC as a central pillar of our transatlantic partnership.

6. We embrace the vision articulated in the Declaration of the Future of the Internet and intend to translate its principles into practice, including those concerning universal access, human rights, openness, and fair competition. We strongly condemn the Russian government’s actions to partially shut down, restrict, or degrade Internet connectivity, to censor content, and to intimidate and arrest independent media. These actions are limiting the ability of people in Russia to access credible and independent information and are undermining the exercise of freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, and association. Russia has repeatedly used the veil of disinformation to obscure war crimes and other atrocities committed by Russian forces, despite horrifying images and reports of torture, sexual violence, and the execution of Ukrainians. We also believe that it is important to combat Russian disinformation in third countries, including with regard to food security, including with our G7 partners. We plan to continue coordination to protect freedom of expression and the integrity of information and to better understand the information ecosystem to advance these goals.

7. We are convinced that the shared transatlantic, democratic, rights-respecting approach that puts individuals at the center is the best way to address global challenges and opportunities presented by both the digital transformation and the green transition. We seek in the TTC to benefit our citizens, workers, businesses, and consumers by pursuing an open global market based on fair competition and contestable digital markets.
8. We intend to continue to use the TTC to collaborate closely to further our values, foster participation in international standardization organizations for civil society organizations, start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, and to protect our joint interests in international standardization activities underpinned by core World Trade Organization (“WTO”) principles. We also intend to engage in relevant international organizations and use other tools at our disposal to protect our interests.

9. We recognize the importance of an open and fair multilateral rules-based system and the need to reform the WTO, including its negotiating, monitoring and dispute settlement function, to build a more durable and viable trading system. We share a desire to work together to ensure concrete progress in this regard at the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference. We resolve to take effective action to address trade-distortive non-market policies and practices, including through our trilateral cooperation with Japan, by identifying problems due to non-market policies and practices; identifying gaps in existing enforcement tools and where further work is needed to develop new tools, discussing cooperation in utilizing existing tools, and identifying areas where further work is needed to develop rules to address such practices.

10. We recognize the importance of emerging technologies for global prosperity and security. We are committed to exchange information and explore opportunities for collaboration in our research and development agendas, notably for Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), telecommunication technologies beyond 5G and 6G, and quantum computing. Given that 6G will be a critical global infrastructure, common approaches towards 6G international standards are particularly relevant. We recognize the potential of earth observation and AI-supported digital models of the earth in the fight against climate change.

11. We intend to accelerate our actions to promote the responsible use of technologies, including by working together on policies, standards and technology governance, to foster the use of critical and emerging technologies in line with democratic values and protection of human rights. We are committed to promoting the responsibility to refrain from the arbitrary or unlawful use of surveillance products or services. We are also committed to promoting respect for human rights by businesses, including by highlighting best practices in due diligence and engaging with civil society and the private sector. The United States and European Union also plan to step up actions against the misuse of technologies as tools of repression and as tools of arbitrary or unlawful surveillance, coercion, and cyber threats. These actions will include building further digital and cyber capacities. We resolve to strengthen our cooperation on protecting human rights defenders online, promoting the open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure Internet, and combatting government-imposed Internet shutdowns.

12. We share the view that online platforms should be transparent and be held accountable to provide services that are safe, respect our democratic societies, and promote freedom of expression and reliable information. The United States and European Union also share a commitment to effective oversight over the role of online platforms in the spread, amplification, and mitigation of illegal and harmful conduct and content and undertake to explore concrete projects to support such oversight. We recognize the global nature of online platform services and aim to cooperate on the enforcement of our respective policies for ensuring a safe, fair and open online environment.

13. We embrace a green transition that will benefit our citizens, workers, businesses, farmers, and consumers in an open global market based on fair competition. We plan to encourage trade and deployment of goods and technologies that can help achieve our common and global climate and environment goals, while working to reduce the greenhouse gas (“GHG”) intensity of a wide array of goods and services. We intend to cooperate in areas such as lifecycle GHG assessment methodologies, including carbon footprinting, green public procurement, and electric vehicle charging infrastructure and interoperable connection, which can help to reduce energy dependency on fossil fuels and support energy autonomy. Our efforts, wherever possible, will look to build on and further empower similar private sector initiatives, such as the First Movers Coalition and the Green Digital Coalition.

14. We reaffirm that we will intensify our work to resolve trade disagreements to our mutual advantage, reduce unnecessary barriers to bilateral trade and investment, and strive to prevent new ones from emerging. We will instead seek to create new opportunities for trade and investment. We regard each other as trustworthy and reliable trade, technology, and investment partners as well as security partners. We will continue to seek amicable solutions to our differences on trade and to ensure that transatlantic trade flows reflect and promote our many shared interests and values.

15. We are acutely aware that trade-in technologies can be pivotal to the ability of autocratic countries to implement authoritarian policies, perpetrate human rights violations and abuses, engage in other forms of repression, and undermine the security of other nations. We share a desire for cooperation through coordinated actions using our export control and investment screening tools in defense of our security. We are committed to deeply enhancing our cooperation and to supporting information exchange on dual-use technologies and export controls. The work of the TTC has already proven foundational in developing common approaches in response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, including by facilitating an unprecedented level of cooperation on export controls.

16. We recognize the importance of having effective investment screening mechanisms in place throughout the European Union and in the United States in order to address national security risks, and within the European Union, for public order, while remaining open for investment. We recognize the value of joint engagement to ensure a better understanding of similarities and differences in approach and, in particular, shared and individual national security risks, allowing us to develop more effective collaboration in the future.

17. We resolve to collaborate to reduce dependencies on unreliable sources of strategic supply, promote reliable sources in our supply chain cooperation, and engage with trusted partners. We share a desire to mitigate jointly the negative effects of sudden supply chain ruptures such as those created by Russia’s aggression, for example in the area of critical materials.

18. We welcome the interest and active involvement of stakeholders who have contributed significantly in the TTC process, and we underline our commitment to continue our in-depth engagement with labor unions, businesses, and civil society. We welcome the multiple engagements that working groups have held with broad groups of interested parties, and the recently initiated, EU-financed Trade and Technology Dialogue. We look forward to continuing this engagement and to identifying new opportunities to bring together diverse stakeholders from across the United States and the European Union. We embrace openness and transparency in our work and will endeavour to make essential information about our meetings and deliverables public.

19. In light of our shared political convictions, and based on the discussions held at the inaugural TTC meeting in Pittsburgh on 29 September 2021, recorded in the U.S.-EU TTC Inaugural Joint Statement, we welcome the following key outcomes since that meeting:
i. Formation of an Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) sub-group to realise our commitment to the responsible stewardship of trustworthy AI and our joint support for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (“OECD”) Recommendation on AI. This sub-working group is working to develop a joint roadmap on evaluation and measurement tools for trustworthy AI and risk management, as well as a common project on privacy-enhancing technologies. We will continue to collaborate on the implementation of the OECD AI principles to further our mutual understanding of how to integrate trustworthy and responsible AI into society. This includes working together to identify and oppose rights-violating systems of social scoring. Finally, we have launched a study to explore the impact of AI on the workforce in two fields, recruitment and logistics.

ii. Creation of an U.S.-EU Strategic Standardisation Information (“SSI”) mechanism to enable information-sharing on international standards development, relevant to the technology and economic interests of the United States and European Union. The United States and the European Union aim to identify proactive opportunities for collaborative action and to promote and defend our common interests in international standards activities for critical and emerging technologies.

iii. In recognition of the positive contribution of transatlantic trade to resilient supply chains, and of our shared vulnerabilities to critical supply chains for semiconductors, critical minerals, clean energy, and pharmaceuticals, an understanding to work towards guiding principles, complementary and joint actions, and cooperation to mitigate risks and to advance the resilience of U.S. and EU supply chains, while confirming our commitment to avoid unnecessary barriers to trade, which could negatively affect the production or export opportunities of the United States and European Union. This includes cooperation to diversify supply chains for rare earth magnets; advance transparency in and diversification of the solar supply chain; promote private sector efforts to increase transparency in the semiconductors value chain and in demand to anticipate shortages; enhance cooperation to provide early warning of semiconductor shortages; and to avoid subsidy races by advancing common goals for incentives granted in respective territories and an exchange of information regarding such incentives on a reciprocal basis.

We also welcome recent announcements of major investments to expand innovative semiconductor manufacturing in both the United States and European Union.
iv. A Joint Statement on the importance of addressing security risks from high-risk vendors and fostering security, diversity, interoperability, and resilience across the digital and information and communications technology and services (“ICTS”) supply chain. Whereas Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has highlighted the importance of secure, trusted, and resilient ICTS to our national security and sovereignty, we reaffirm the ambition of the 2021 Ministerial Declaration of the G7 Digital and Technology Ministers’ meeting to promote secure, resilient, diverse, competitive, transparent, and sustainable digital, telecommunications, and ICTS infrastructure supply chain.

v. The launch of a dedicated taskforce on public financing for secure and resilient connectivity and ICTS supply chains in third countries. The taskforce has the objective to promote the use of trusted/non-high-risk suppliers, share information on our respective efforts to support secure, resilient, and rights-respecting ICTS projects in third countries, and collaborate on joint U.S.-EU public financing of ICTS projects in third-countries based on common overarching principles. The taskforce will also determine how like-minded partners and international financial institutions, including at the Member State level as appropriate, can strengthen our ability to provide the financing that our partners need to improve their ICTS infrastructure and provide secure, trusted digital services to their citizens. These efforts should support U.S. and EU flagship global development initiatives.

vi. The establishment of our unprecedented cooperation on export controls, which formed a significant portion of our response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, with a view to support further common approaches, including the update of controlled goods list taking into account decisions of multilateral export control regimes, to cooperate with partners beyond the United States and European Union, and to regularly consult on new actions that could affect the United States or the European Union.

vii. The engagement in practical exercises as part of a coordinated effort to share best practices on investment screening cooperation, with a view to remaining open to foreign investment, to deepen our understanding of security risks related to specific sensitive technologies and the policy tools addressing those risks, increasing our collective security, and supporting our open investment environments, while protecting our security interests.

viii. The creation of a policy dialogue within the TTC on core issues of content moderation, as well as with a commitment to developing a common analytical framework for identifying foreign information manipulation and interference that should enable faster information exchange and effective countermeasures, especially in crisis situations. We also intend to establish a Cooperation Framework on Information Integrity in crisis situations, including on data governance and platform governance risks pertaining to a crisis. The Framework will initially focus on ongoing issues related to Russian aggression, including Russia’s actions to manipulate and censor information.

ix. The establishment of a tripartite Trade and Labor Dialogue within the TTC, involving representatives of trade unions, businesses, and the European Commission and U.S. Government, to explore ways to promote internationally-recognized labor rights, including the eradication of forced labor and child labor; and through social dialogue, assist workers and employers to make successful digital and green transitions, remain globally competitive, and enjoy broad and inclusive prosperity. In parallel to the Trade and Labor Dialogue, we intend to cooperate on other efforts to promote internationally recognized labor rights and the eradication of forced labor and child labor, by promoting responsible business conduct, increasing the effectiveness of trade and labor engagements, and exploring possible joint technical cooperation and funding in support of these trade and labor engagements.

x. The establishment of an early alert dialogue on shared trade concerns regarding initiatives or measures of third countries, and a mechanism to consult each other on bilateral barriers at an early stage, in order to enhance communication and exchange of information on measures or initiatives that could pose significant non-tariff trade barriers for the United States and/or the European Union.

xi. The identification of specific areas or products, including those identified by industry stakeholders, where strengthened cooperation on conformity assessment could facilitate transatlantic trade.

xii. The joint intention to intensify U.S.-EU cooperation in the area of public procurement, for example in areas such as digital infrastructure, health, or high-tech industrial products.

xiii. The United States and the European Union highlight the disruptions to Ukraine’s economy that the unprovoked and unjustified invasion by Russia causes and our unwavering support to Ukraine. We note that the deepening of their respective existing trade relations with Ukraine can be a key facilitator in that regard. We, therefore, intend to identify measures that will expand trade with and investment in Ukraine, as a means of mitigating the devastation caused by Russia’s ongoing military aggression and strengthening the Ukrainian economy. The United States and the European Union have therefore taken concrete and rapid steps to facilitate Ukraine’s access to their markets.

20. We charge all working groups to build on progress made thus far to implement concrete actions in advance of the next ministerial meeting, in consultation with stakeholders by making full use of the new Trade and Technology Dialogue facility. Specifically, we look forward to working together on a roadmap for AI risk management tools in support of standards and regulations; new initiatives to alleviate supply chain pressures in key sectors; the creation of a mechanism to exchange relevant information on export restrictions; convergence on methodologies and reporting on investment screening to improve accountability; issuance of a set of government recommendations on measures to assist small and medium enterprises to access digital tools to grow their business; and further work to coordinate our trade response to non-market policies and practices and to deepen bilateral trade and investments.

21. We jointly endorse the conclusions and statements of the TTC working groups listed in the annexes. They reflect the implementation of the objectives determined at our meeting in Pittsburgh, as well as work plans and goals for the future. We intend to continue achieving concrete and tangible results of value to stakeholders. We task working groups to continue working in line with these jointly determined objectives.

22. We plan to meet again for the next TTC before the end of 2022 in the United States to advance new concrete results and to steer further work and cooperation, and assess progress on the goals outlined in paragraph 20. 23. We reiterate that our partnership on trade and technology takes place in full respect of the regulatory autonomy of the United States and European Union, and our respective institutional orders and frameworks." Source : US. State of Commerce