Main obstacles for the Trade and Technology Council are differences in interests and objectives between the US and EU

Although the European Union and the United States have converged on the need to create the Trade and Technology Council (TTC) there are still many differences in perspectives. This is because the EU is playing defensively to build autonomy, while the US sees technology policies as a tool for maintaining its superpower role and containing the rise of China. This is one of the conclusions of the report entitled ‘The US-EU Trade and Technology Council: Current status, problems, and challenges for the transatlantic relationship’ by José Ignacio Torreblanca, senior fellow at EsadeEcPol and director in Madrid of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Raquel Jorge-Ricart, policy analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute. The report is published by the Open Internet Governance Institute – founded by EsadeEcPol to support global and open internet governance.

The report states that the Trade and Technology Council (TTC) faces two dangers‘The first is that the EU will only address market regulation issues, on which the US can hardly agree; and the second is that America will only see the treaty as an exercise for countering China, which would generate frustration in Washington, because the EU contribution will never meet expectations in content or speed, and in Brussels, which is worried about both Beijing and the power of American technology companies’.

Rebuilding the transatlantic relationship

The transatlantic relationship is in a moment of reconstruction that is marked by major convergences, but also by crucial differences in the interests, objectives, and strategies of the EU and the US. The TTC is built around ten working groups covering a wide range of topics: cooperation on technology standard setting; green and climate technologies; supply chain security; security and competitiveness of information and communication technologies; data governance and technology platforms; misuse of technology that undermines security and human rights; export controls; monitoring of investments in sensitive sectors; promoting access to and use of digital technologies by smaller firms; and global trade challenges.

According to José Ignacio Torreblanca and Raquel Jorge-Ricart: ‘the creation of the Trade and Technology Council shows that both sides want to overcome long-standing differences in key market and industry areas, while improving trade and technology exchanges. However, the TTC also offers a key opportunity to shape global technology governance around the core values of democracy, open societies, and market economies that are shared by the US and EU’. The authors recommend that both the EU and US extend the benefits of their cooperation on technology issues to allies, like-minded nations, and other regions – and help create a fair and inclusive rules-based technology order.

The report groups the impact and consequences of the TTC into three areas:

• Markets: a transatlantic realignment based on a regulatory framework that provides legal certainty could increase consumer benefits while reducing trade frictions and limiting the costs and negative externalities of a fragmented transatlantic market. However, without addressing the contentious issue of data flows – so far neglected by the TTC – success will be in doubt.
• Security: a transatlantic realignment would provide efficient regimes to protect investments in crucial sectors, help stop the export of key technologies to autocracies, and help our allies protect their digital infrastructures.
• Democracy and values: a transatlantic realignment could strengthen democracy and human rights, but this will need agreement on platform regulation and content moderation. Without such agreement, the democratic narrative of the TTC may remain just talk rather than action.

The authors caution that change driven by technology is a reality and that both sides should approach technology from values and see the TTC as a shared strategic response to a geopolitical challenge that is shaping power and alliances. The TTC, says the authors, can become a driver of democratic technological governance that provides a haven in which budding, vulnerable, and established democracies can protect themselves.