The US and EU agreed at their summit in Brussels to create a new high-level council to address technology issues. The new forum is expected to ease talks over a number of issues, from privacy regulation and competition on the internet to setting new technology standards and securing the global supply chain.
The EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) will meet periodically at political level to steer the cooperation. It will be co-chaired by European Commission's competition and trade chiefs, Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis, along with the US Secretaries of State and Commerce, Antony Blinken and Gina Raimondo, and the US Trade Representative, Katherine Tai. Others from the Commission and and of US Departments will be invited based on the issues under discussion.
According to a statement, the main goals of the TTC are expand and deepen bilateral trade and investment, avoid new technical barriers to trade, cooperate on key policies on technology, digital issues and supply chains, support collaborative research, cooperate on the development of compatible and international standards, facilitate cooperation on regulatory policy and enforcement, and promote innovation and leadership by EU and US firms.
Several working groups have been agreed already, to coordinate the technical work. These include technology standards (including AI and IoT, among other emerging technologies), climate and green tech, secure supply chains (including semiconductors), ICT security and competitiveness, data governance and technology platforms, the misuse of technology threatening security and human rights, export controls
investment screening, promoting SME access to and use of digital technologies, and global trade challenges.
In parallel, the EU and the US have set up a Joint Technology Competition Policy Dialogue that will focus on developing common approaches and strengthening the cooperation on competition policy and enforcement in the tech sectors.
The new cooperation was welcomed by the industry groups ETNO and USTelecom in a joint statement. They said it "will be critically important" to include stakeholders in the trans-Atlantic dialogue, "including and especially telecom industry leaders".
