In Europe, distrust of our superpower status and
surveillance programs may be smoldering hotter than the western regions of our
country right now. Transatlantic
trade negotiators are presumably taking this week off anyway. But next week, European and U.S.
negotiators will hopefully resume talks. Then the annual transatlantic week in Washington
starts July 15th.
EU officials and corporate executives are headed to
Washington soon loaded with questions and concerns. Actually a bipartisan group of 26 U.S. Senators has just
expressed privacy questions and concerns as well in a letter to the Director of
National Intelligence. It’s
important this month to welcome the Europeans, our closest allies, forthrightly
and constructively in service of our mutual economic and security
interests. Dealing with
“fence-sitter” nations around the world, not to mention hardcore repressive
regimes on economic and security issues will be far more difficult, so let’s
start out on a good footing in the coming weeks as we focus on the
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Increasingly, the Internet is a seamless global trading
platform enabling existing, new and expanded commerce in most every
sector. Massive commercial data
centers or Internet exchange points are located in or near all major cities
around the world. Europeans and
Americans already happen to agree that the non-governmental multi-stakeholder
framework for Internet governance is the healthiest way forward for both
functioning civic societies and their economic growth and development. This accord on the importance of an
open Internet applied to its function as the online trading platform of the 21st
century could form the foundation of a new transatlantic free trade
opportunity. Of course,
synching up privacy expectations and data protection regimes is a big
challenge. But the going
really will not get any easier with trading partners for goods and services
elsewhere around the world.
