New technical standards deal signed during EU-US trade meetings

WASHINGTON, 17 July – The US and European research agencies signed a new agreement here to collaborate more in developing technical standards, as the two governments continue negotiations towards a major new trade agreement.

The pact, between the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), provides a small step forward on one of the key difficulties in liberalising US and EU trade: standards setting. Signed in the US Capitol Building by JRC Director General Dominique Ristori and NIST Director Patrick Gallagher, the deal will permit the two agencies to exchange more information and expertise in 10 sectors, including energy and medicines.

The announcement was timed to be a bit of ‘good news’ in the second week of US and EU trade talks – but planning for it had been going on independently of the negotiations and isn’t directly linked to them. Still, officials welcomed it as a sign of the willingness of both sides to find a route through the tangled trade issues – from agriculture to financial services to genetically modified foods – that will have to be resolved to achieve their goal of a comprehensive trade agreement by the end of 2014.

The trade talks began July 8 in this sweltering hot city, and any resulting agreement could have far-reaching effects on trade and cooperation in many areas of research and innovation – as well as broader areas of the economies. US-EU trade is vitally important to the global economy, amounting to 30 per cent of world trade and nearly half of global production, and totaling €2 billion a day. The European Commission has estimated that a new trade-liberalisation agreement could boost GDP in Europe alone by half a percentage point, amounting to €545 a year for the average European household. US estimates of impact are comparable.

Informal discussions

This week, a large delegation of members of the European Parliament, European Commission officials and European companies and academics are meeting on Capitol Hill under the aegis of two organisations, the Transatlantic Policy Network and the European Ideas Network – and meeting with US counterparts to discuss the trade issues informally. Ristori and Gallagher were speaking at the TPN sessions.

The standards issue is important in trade because it affects how difficult or costly it becomes for an invention or new service in one country to be sold in another – and economists have been pointing to a rising wall of standards as constituting a form of non-tariff trade barriers that, while motivated for health and safety protection, also restrain trade. The JRC-NIST agreement makes it easier for the two agencies to share information on standards, reference materials, indicators and documentary standards in ten areas: energy, transport, security, healthcare, food, nanotechnology, civil engineering, emerging information technologies, marine optical radiometry and environment/climate fields.

In the trade talks, however, direct discussion for liberalisation is underway in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, alternative energy and many other technology sectors. In addition, several experts have advocated there be a separate chapter in the treaty for cross-sectoral innovation issues, such as intellectual property protection, research collaboration and researcher/engineer mobility.

The Transatlantic Business Council, a US-EU trade organization, recently argued that “a comprehensive innovation chapter should address impediments to the freest possible exchange of ideas, capital, goods, services and people, and create a common framework between the US and EU for programs to encourage both basic research and development and also the commercialization of new technologies.”