cross-posted at The European Tribune
Last December, 2004, there was an excellent article published in The Nation titled New Power for ,,Old Europe” by Mark Schapiro that described in great depth the growing economic and environmental regulatory powers of the European Union, specifically in comparison to the United States. In recently re-reading that article, I was struck by how it remains fresh and relevant to many of the conversations at the European Tribune, so will quote extensively from this article, in order create some conversation on the ideas created therein:
Since the fall of the Berlin wall, the European Union has been steadily transforming itself from a facilitator of trade to a sophisticated geopolitical power with the teeth to back up its policies–an evolution that has occurred largely under the American public’s radar. Over the past decade, EU member states have ceded governing and enforcement authority to Brussels in areas ranging from environmental regulation to food safety, accounting standards, telecommunications policy and oversight of corporate mergers. As a result, US companies that do business in Europe–which remains America’s largest export market–are quickly learning that “old Europe” is now wielding new world power.
Here is an interesting and important example of some of the growing environmental regulatory clout that the EU wields with the US:
US manufacturers of such goods as chemicals, cars and cosmetics have been confronted with EU regulations that force a choice: Either conform to the EU’s standards of pre-emptive screening for toxicity–far tougher than US standards–or risk sacrificing the European market, which, with 450 million people, is now larger than that of the United States. In the process, the European Union is challenging US presumptions of unilateral decision-making on issues with tremendous consequences for American companies and consumers, treading on ground that has long been considered sacred turf.
One example is the development of the new European Union REACH directive:
The REACH directive represents an upheaval in the basic philosophy of chemical regulation, flipping the American presumption of “innocent until proven guilty” on its head by placing the burden of proof on manufacturers to prove chemicals are safe–what is known as the “precautionary principle.” REACH adds extra bite with a requirement that toxicity data be posted publicly on the new agency’s website. Thus, test results that were once tightly held by chemical companies will suddenly be available to citizens and regulators across the globe. That prospect foreshadows trouble for US chemical producers.
“The chemical industry is scared that the American people might not want to be second-class world citizens,” says Charlotte Brody, executive director of Health Care Without Harm, a Washington, DC-based coalition of healthcare professionals. “If people in Europe are protected from chemicals in their toys that are dangerous, maybe we won’t want those same chemicals for our kids.”
Think about this for a moment: The European Union puts the health of their citizens over the health (and wealth) of the corporations. What a concept!
Never before has an EU proposal drawn fire from such heavy guns. The US chemical industry, like other American industries, has been discovering that a presence in Brussels is now a must–and has had to learn new ways to exert influence in a governing institution with three chambers, twenty-five countries and twenty national languages, and in which the usual cocktail of campaign contributions, arm-twisting and seduction are neither warmly received nor, in the case of campaign contributions, legal.
And if considering the health of their citizens first isn’t novel enough, the European Union is also taking steps to protect the overall environment more actively too.
The EU has implemented a program with the oddly philosophical title “End of Life Vehicles Directive.” Starting in 2006, all cars produced or sold in the EU must be built with at least 85 percent recyclable components; by 2015 that figure rises to 95 percent. The directive also bans toxic heavy metals like cadmium and requires that manufacturers take responsibility for disposing of their cars. According to the European Commission’s administrator for the vehicles program, Rosalinde van der Vlies, European, Japanese and Korean car manufacturers are already beginning to adapt their production processes in anticipation of the new requirements.
For US car manufacturers the directive presents a historic challenge (because they are not making the same preparations as the above manufacturers, and thus stand to lose their right to sell any cars that don’t meet those standards, which would be a substantial loss of money over a period of years for a group of companies that are already in trouble
Has someone been putting something in their wheaties, er…cappuccinos and croissants?
Every European diplomat I spoke with was careful to insist that Europe’s new generation of environmental directives is not intended to “impose” Europe’s will upon the United States. Camilo Barcia Garcia-Villamil, the Spanish consul in San Francisco, who spent fifteen years working with the EU in Brussels, comments: “The European Union now has increased decision-making capacity. And if American companies want to be active in the European market, they must take account of European rules. We are not imposing our standards. We are making foreign companies respect our standards when they are in Europe.” This is diplomatic language that is new in the context of transatlantic relations–though its inverted formulation would be quite familiar to generations of postwar American policy-makers.
Perhaps this partly explains the steady stream of rhetoric from the US neo-conservatives, who continue to proclaim US economic superiority, and that “resisitance is futile”. But beyond the public pronouncements, some people higher up are apparently getting uncomfortable about the new European power.
“Economically, Europe stands toe to toe with the United States,” says Clyde Prestowitz, now head of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington. “We can’t dictate to it any longer. We have to negotiate.”
For the first time in history, a superpower has emerged that is not based on nationalistic ambitions or military power, but upon a voluntary submission of national aspirations to a transnational authority. And its architects were well aware of the EU’s departure from the usual march of political history: Jacques Delors, the visionary European Commission president from 1985 to 1994, used to refer lightheartedly to the evolving Union as an “Unidentified Political Object.” On foreign affairs, Europeans continue to have trouble speaking with one voice–as the divisions in Europe over the US invasion of Iraq showed. But on domestic matters, the EU speaks for Europe–and it is those initiatives, emanating from Brussels, that are sending powerful messages across the Atlantic. “In Europe today, we are seeing a focal point of regulatory action other than the United States that, for the first time in the postwar period, is driving world markets,” says David Wirth, a trade law specialist.
EU politics are a complicated business; the Parliament is as tumultuous a democratic body as any. The controversy over the nomination of a new European justice commissioner with extreme views on women and homosexuals illustrated some of the social and political frictions that continue to divide Europeans, a passing storm to which much of the American media responded with smug condescension. Those developments came on the heels of a European parliamentary election (in June 2004) that drastically changed the composition of the legislature: Ten new member countries, most from the orbit of the former Soviet Union, sent delegations to the Parliament; 50 percent of the MEPs who won election had never before served in Brussels. But these changes show little sign of derailing the regulatory policies that are now embedded in the EU’s machinery of government.
Could it be, that under the bravado of “our economic system is better than yours”, the US doesn’t like and isn’t happy at all about what it is seeing in the development of the EU as a rival economic power? And why might this be?
Now that Europe has a phone number (in Brussels), US ardor for integration has begun to cool. “The White House is questioning whether it’s a good idea for Europe to be speaking with one voice,” says Fraser Cameron, director of studies at the European Policy Center in Brussels.
Cameron points out that the United States and the European Union remain each other’s most significant trading partners in the world–our entanglements are deep and abiding. But as Europe becomes a more assertive political force, the question will become, as he puts it,
“Why shouldn’t Americans enjoy the same standards as Europeans?”
Indeed. Perhaps the real fear is that the citizens of the United States will one day wake up and realize that they have become second class citizens, in comparison to the citizens of the European Union, where their political body has shown the will to put the rights and health of the citizens first, over corporate health. For the sake of the American citizen, we can only hope for that day.
