THE TRANSATLANTIC ECONOMIC INTEGRATION
PART 22

http://www.newswithviews.com/Spingola/deanna71.htm

Deanna Spingola
May 13, 2007
NewsWithViews.com

Long before George W. Bush met with Paul Martin, then Canada’s Prime Minister and Vicente Fox, then Mexico’s president at Baylor University in the miserably memorialized city of Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005, he had a similar meeting in Göteborg, Sweden on June 14, 2001 with Romano Prodi, then European Commission President and Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson, then President of the European Council. There were several reasons for this media-blacked-out meeting but the essential purpose was the discussion and implementation of the Transatlantic Agenda, supported by both E.U. and U.S. authorities.[1]

The Transatlantic Agenda was adopted on December 3, 1995 at the EU-US Summit in Madrid and signed by William Clinton, then U.S. president and Felipe Gonzalez, then Spanish Prime Minister and Jacques Santer, then European Commission President (1995 – 15 March 1999). The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union.[2] On 1 May 2004 the European Union (EU) undertook an historic enlargement, bringing the total number of Member States from fifteen to twenty five.

Then again from 25 to 26 June 2004, George W. Bush met with Romano Prodi and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, then President of the European Council in the Dromoland Castle, County Clare, Ireland.[3] They discussed Iraq, the Middle East and counter-terrorism. The summit ended with an agreement between the satellite navigation systems, GPS from the US and the EU’s Galileo system, which secures full interoperability of the two satellite navigation systems. This agreement, initiated in December 1995, was signed by U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, Commission Vice President Loyola de Palacio and Irish Foreign Minister, Brian Cowen. The system will be operational by 2008, possibly to coincide with Real ID?[4]

The crux of this media-blacked-out summit: “The EU and the US are committed to a result-driven economic partnership focused on well-identified and mutually beneficial bilateral projects in all areas where better cooperation between governments and regulators can achieve common solutions to concrete problems affecting transatlantic business.â€