By Hendrik Bourgeois, Vice-President Government Affairs, Europe
Last week, I attended a stakeholder event at the 6th ministerial meeting of the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council (TTC). It was hosted in the Belgian town of Leuven, home of one of the world’s leading semiconductor research centers, imec. Bringing together regulators and legislators to align policies on both sides of the Atlantic – on regulating artificial intelligence or building a global and resilient semiconductor supply chain – may be, to some, a commonly recognized need but was by no means a self-starter.
The TTC as it stands today is the result of the hard work of dedicated policymakers in Washington D.C., Brussels, and beyond, recognizing the tremendous value and necessity of constructive dialogue between like-minded partners on key global trade, economic, and technology issues in the current geopolitical climate. Some, not entirely without merit, have criticized the forum for not delivering enough concrete results. But building trust-based partnerships takes time. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
Intel has been supportive of the TTC from the outset. After all, the transatlantic partnership has been the engine for positive change for decades, fostering technological innovation and economic growth. And the TTC has shown its impressive resilience in the face of economic and political headwinds. However, the upcoming elections in both Europe and the U.S. may delay a follow-up to this latest meeting. Indeed, while last Friday’s joint statement does not make an explicit reference to when the next session will be held, there is a lot at stake for both the EU and the U.S. in keeping the council active and effective.
Some industry voices will lament that the TTC was plagued by disagreements in digital policy and never developed a sufficiently future-oriented agenda. That’s fair. But let’s not underestimate just how far regular meetings on both high and working levels go in establishing durable and productive relations between governments. Opportunities to talk mean opportunities to discover common challenges and find ways to tackle them more effectively and efficiently by working together. That is what the TTC enabled. Partners started to realize how much of a common challenge the resilience of supply chains is and that it is best tackled by sharing information on supply bottlenecks, coordinating work on facilitating secure high-technology trade and investing in critical technologies like semiconductors.
Looking at the 6th TTC conclusions, we see a concrete pledge to continue cooperation – including with other likeminded partners – on building resilient and secure global semiconductor supply chains and advancing cutting-edge technologies of the future like AI and 6G. For this purpose, the EU and the U.S. will create new, and extend existing, administrative arrangements to continue building the technical cooperation that sits at the heart of this partnership. I can only applaud this.
However, there is still a lot of ground to cover, and the full potential of the transatlantic partnership has obviously not yet been realized. The key takeaway for the future of the TTC – whatever shape it might take – would be to clearly define roles and provide much more opportunities for industry experts to bring their expertise to the table. The next step of the digital and tech transition needs the full weight of combined public-private expertise from both sides of the Atlantic. The success of the past will be the key to the future progress: opportunities to talk, to discover common challenges, and to jointly tackle them. That is why we need to keep working together – across sectors as well as across the Atlantic – to make progress.
The result of the six TTC rounds lays the foundation for continued U.S.-EU partnership. A partnership shaped by technical and expertise-driven cooperation on trade and technology matters has been established, and the 6th TTC’s commitments to maintaining administrative cooperation will continue to shape our future. However, while each successive TTC has provided a foundational building block that has cemented joint action, its future success is by no means guaranteed. Political principles will change but TTC stakeholders will remain the same. Accordingly, only with much deeper and regular stakeholder dialogues and cooperation, and with a strengthened transatlantic public private partnership, can we create a strategic and more ambitious transatlantic relationship. And that is what is required to preserve our common prosperity, given the increasingly complex geopolitical context. Intel is ready to play its part.
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