Home ›› 18 May 2022 ›› Opinion

Russia overshadows EU-US tech and trade talks

Mark Scott
18 May 2022 00:00:00 | Update: 18 May 2022 00:10:42
Russia overshadows EU-US tech and trade talks

When senior American and European officials gather on the outskirts of Paris on Sunday, there will be only one thing on their minds: Russia.

As part of the second meeting of the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council (TTC) — a two-day transatlantic diplomatic renewal led by officials including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager — a spate of Russia-focused announcements are planned to demonstrate how much the European Union and the United States stand side by side with Ukraine, according to the meeting’s final statement obtained by POLITICO.

There will be joint efforts to clamp down on Kremlin-backed disinformation. There will be renewed support for Kyiv in its months-long war with Moscow. There will be greater transatlantic cooperation on everything from microchips and global trade standards to funding for next-generation mobile telecommunications equipment and increased access to Western markets for Ukraine.

“It is the TTC and the foundation we built last year [that is] why we have been able to work in such a coordinated, such a focused, such an allied fashion, dealing with this threat to all of our security,” Peter Harrell, senior director for international economics and competitiveness at the White House’s National Security Council, told POLITICO.

“Now, in France, is going to be an opportunity to drive that cooperation even further,” he added. Coordination via the TTC “gave us the foundation on which we have been able to successfully do so much cooperation on Ukraine and Russia.”

Yet all is not rosy in Brussels’ and Washington’s efforts to reset their relationship in the post-Donald Trump era.

The transatlantic get-together is coupled with 10 separate working groups of EU and U.S. officials who are hashing out details on specific topics like export controls, investment screening and how to police online platforms. Yet beyond the Russian-focused objectives, the TTC has mostly sidestepped smoldering issues that remain unresolved.

The US and EU are still at loggerheads over what to do about China’s growing role in the world. They can’t agree on a regulatory rulebook to hobble Big Tech. And both sides are staunch economic rivals that are competing aggressively, even while trying to show greater cooperation on global trade standards and pushback against authoritarian regimes.

Such tensions, according to five EU and U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal meetings, have been mothballed during this weekend’s meeting to show a united front against Russia’s invasion of its Western neighbor. The goal, according to three of those officials, was to refocus on the wider global challenges at the next TTC meeting planned in the U.S. some time in late 2022.

“We don’t have clarity [on] where this is going,” said Laurens Rutten, a senior international affairs officer at the European consumer advocacy BEUC, which, as part of a transatlantic grouping of campaigning organizations, participated in meetings linked to the TTC. “Lots of stuff has been happening, and it’s clear we’re at the end of the setup mode. But what are the EU and U.S. institutions preparing the TTC to do next?”

Early wins and a focus on Russia

Senior officials including Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will highlight increased coordination on semiconductors, artificial intelligence and international digital standards, even as they defer on addressing thorny issues.

As part of the summit’s expected outcomes, Washington and Brussels will create so-called early warning systems aimed at speeding up cooperation in response to when other countries — most notably China — throw up potential trade barriers for Western companies, as well as for untangling bottlenecks in the global microchip supply chain. Officials will also announce more funding, particularly for developing countries, so governments can purchase Western telecoms equipment to reduce their reliance on Chinese vendors.

In a nod to how the EU and U.S. are pushing back against Russian disinformation and propaganda during the ongoing war in Ukraine, the creation of a so-called joint crisis mechanism is expected in the coming months so that both sides can better coordinate their response to maligned social media content.

For Vestager, the European Commission executive vice president in charge of the bloc’s digital agenda, the fact that senior officials now regularly swap emails and text messages — building up personal connections — has helped to quickly respond to Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine. That’s particularly on display in how Washington and Brussels used the TTC to coordinate separate sanctions against the Kremlin, using those existing connections to fast-track the joint response.

“It may sound very trivial but the fact that you know one another at all levels — you have met, you have the mail addresses, you have the phone numbers, you’ve been talking with one another before. That has helped us in being so much more efficient when it comes to the sanctions,” Vestager told POLITICO. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm to push forward on the agenda of the TTC.”

Despite such goodwill, the success of this regular transatlantic meeting is still in the balance, and three of the EU and U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told POLITICO that it would be the next TTC gathering where the rubber would really hit the road.

One of the U.S. policymakers said Washington hoped to leverage the hard language aimed at Russia in the upcoming statement into efforts to successfully hobble China’s aggressive digital and trade expansion, in direct competition with the U.S. Coordinating with Brussels against Moscow, he added, was a precursor to a potentially harder-line stance against Beijing, which is also using its political clout to steer global artificial intelligence and trading standards.

dpolitico

×