EU-US Relations: Transatlantic Economic Council to Meet on November 29, 2011

Originally published November 17, 2011

Keywords: Transatlantic Economic Council, TEC, De Gucht, Froman, EU-US Summit

On November 29, 2011 the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) will meet for the sixth time for the purpose of moving forward the political and economic transatlantic dialogue between the European Union and the United States. The meeting will take place in Washington DC and will be chaired by Karel De Gucht, European Commissioner for Trade, and Michael Froman, Deputy Assistant to the US President and Deputy National Security Adviser for international economic affairs.

The TEC meeting will follow the annual EU-US Summit to be held on November 28th, 2011 in Washington as well. The EU-US Summit will be chaired by European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, European Council President Herman van Rompuy and US President Barack Obama and it will be devoted to discussing, among other matters, global economic issues, bilateral relations and opportunities to promote growth and jobs.

Key Issues

A draft agenda for the TEC meeting on November 29, 2011 has already been circulated. The first part of the meeting will be devoted to taking stock on the achievements made so far within the TEC. This includes discussing the next steps in the work streams of these key areas. The second part of the meeting will be dedicated to identifying new issues going forward and the role the TEC could play in these new areas of cooperation.

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

E-mobility and, in particular, electric vehicles, constitutes one of TEC's major successes. It is an area where the cooperation between regulators, standardisation bodies and business has been very fruitful and the definition of a joint roadmap has led to the development of compatible standards for electric cars and smart grids on both sides of the Atlantic. Moreover, once agreed to and implemented, the same standards could then be promoted in international fora to be also used in third countries (such as China and India).

The TEC will now review the progress achieved regarding the standards for electric vehicles and the status of pilot projects. Following this, the TEC will try to find a coherent approach to standards for vehicle connectors linking them with the grid.

Main achievements in this area include:

Agreement reached on the roadmap on regulatory issues, standardization and research programmes; Agreement reached by seven transatlantic car manufacturers (Audi, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Porsche and Volkswagen) to support a harmonised single-port fast-charging approach in October 2011;- US Department of Energy and EU's Joint Research Centre closely working on a proposal for the development of test facilities on...

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