Address
to the EU Committee Meeting
of the United States Council for International
Business
Ambassador John
Bruton
Head of the Delegation of the
European Commission to the United States
7th
March 2005, 1 pm
It is commonplace to say
that the United States and the European Union
countries have the most intense economic
relationship in the World. Our trade is
$1 trillion a year and mutual investment is
even more important. US firms make a lot of
their profit in Europe, and European firms make
a lot of their profits in the United States.
Is all of this just the fruit of technology
and opportunity, or is there some deeper reason
for it? Is good finance the driver, or is the
good finance the result of something else?
I believe there is something else involved –
two in fact.
Politics and Shared Values
First Politics:
Europe is an attractive place for US companies
to invest because of political decisions taken
over the last
fifty years. If, fifty years ago, Western
European politicians had turned their back on
the dream of creating a European Political and
Economic Union and had insisted instead that
national states retain complete discretion to
individually set their own tariffs and investment
rules and consumer standards, we would never
have had the single European Common Market of
450 million people we have today. No, we would
have had twenty-five different markets, with
twenty-five different sets of tariffs, of investment
rules and of consumer standards.
With twenty-five different sets of hurdles to
cross, American firms would not have bothered
selling as much to Europe or investing as much
in Europe. Europeans would have been poorer
too, because they would have been selling less
to one another, and they would have had less
disposable funds to invest in the United States.
Without what many considered at the time to
be the naïve and idealistic dream of European
leaders meeting in Messina in 1955 of creating
a European Political and Economic Union, both
America and Europe would be poorer than they
are today. Europeans a lot poorer, Americans
not a little poorer.
And a poor and divided Europe would not have
been as comparatively peaceful a place as it
has been. In the absence of the visible prosperity
of Western Europe for which the existence of
the European Union is largely responsible, perhaps
the East Germans would not have had to put up
their wall to keep their people in. If they
could not see on television and by sight the
freedom and prosperity of EU States just over
their borders, perhaps Central and Eastern Europeans
might not have risen up so soon. Without the
existence of the EU, Communism might have survived
longer because its inferior economic efficiency
would not have become obvious so soon.
Of course this is not the whole story. Without
America’s support and encouragement, the space
would not have existed for the creation of any
European Union. Without America’s military commitment,
Communism might still rule in large parts of
Europe. This is not just a European story, it
is an American story, a story we have in common
– a common political achievement.
That is why I say that politics is at the source
of the Euro-American economic success story.
Shared Values are also at the source
of that Euro-American economic success story.
And to see that we must go back more than a
mere fifty years.
In business terms, the most relevant value that
Europeans and Americas have created together
is the importance we both place on the rule
of law. By this I mean the idea that business
and other disputes can in the last resort be
settled in court, on the basis of predictable
rules, that that court will decide cases independently
of the views of the executive power of the state,
and that it will not be corrupted by bribery
or prejudice.
Without the rule of law, there could be no such
thing as private property or as enforceable
contracts. Short-term business returns are no
use, unless you can rely on the durability of
private property and the enforceability of contracts.
The European and American political tradition,
going back to the eighteenth century and beyond,
has nourished and developed this concept of
the rule of law. We have underpinned the rule
of law in our national constitutions. It has
become part of our culture, part of the assumption
we make about our daily lives. The rule of law
is second nature to us.
And the rule of law is at the heart of the 38,000
pages of legislation that any state must adopt,
if it is to aspire to European Union membership.
This is why the EU/US relationship is so precious.
It is precious because it is built on deeply
embedded shared assumptions like the rule of
law, deeply embedded shared assumptions of which
the close economic relationship is just one
visible expression.
Of course we will have arguments. Arguments
about issues like Iraq.
But these arguments take place within the United
States, too. And they are arguments coming from
an assumption that these are shared values.
Indeed if there were no shared values to appeal
to, why would one bother having an argument
at all?
I have heard the view advanced that values in
EU and in US values are diverging. That Europe
is secular, while America is religious. That
Europe relies on soft power, while America relies
on hard power. That Europe emphasizes the responsibility
of the state to provide social and health security,
while America stresses individual and personal
responsibility. That, in general, Europe emphasizes
stability, while America stresses freedom.
Every one of these differences does exist. They
are not the invention of some fevered intellectual.
But they are differences of emphasis, not differences
of fundament.
There are many deeply religious people in Europe,
and European secularism is no more than a reaction
against excesses from which Americans escaped
in the eighteenth century.
Europe does emphasise soft power because its
experience of the exercise of its military power
has not always been happy, but there are many
Americans who have similar hesitations.
In general European countries do have a more
developed welfare state, but these welfare states
exist by the decision of individual countries.
They are not imposed by the European Union.
And America, through its social security, Medicare
and Medicaid systems, also has a substantial
welfare state. Indeed, Europeans and Americans
share a common sense that care for the weakest
is a hallmark of civilization.
The age of the average European is slightly
higher than the age of the average American,
and as people get older they stress stability
a bit more and freedom a bit less. But Europe’s
young people have freedoms today that earlier
generations could only have dreamed of. They
are free to live and work and go about their
business anywhere in twenty-five countries.
They are free to say what they like, and their
rights are protected by both their own national
constitutions and by European Human Rights Institutions.
But freedom has many definitions.
As Abraham Lincoln said in Baltimore many years
ago:
“We all declare
for liberty, but in using the same word we
do not mean the same thing. With some the
word “liberty,” means for each man to do as
he pleases with himself and the product of
his labour; while with others the same word
may mean for some men to do as they please
with other men and with the product of other
men’s labour.”
This is a discussion that
will go on forever, as long as politics and
democracy exists. We, who enjoy relative freedom,
must constantly try to see things from the perspective
of those who are less fortunate than us.
We must be generous, while protecting fiercely
the free institution that we, Europeans and
Americans together, have developed so painfully
over the past three hundred years.
