Immer gerade aus

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/20/business/yourmoney/20EURO.html

Europe Gets Tougher on U.S. Companies
By SAMUEL LOEWENBERG

BRUSSELS

AMERICAN corporations doing business in Europe are finding themselves in an unusual
position. They are having to follow orders.

The European Union, which includes 15 member countries from Portugal to Finland and
Ireland to Greece, is adopting environmental and consumer protection legislation that
will go further in regulating corporate behavior than almost anything the United States
government has enacted in decades. For American companies that are accustomed to
getting their way in Washington, it has come as a shock.

"They are big powerful companies in the U.S., but just because they are big powerful
companies in the U.S. doesn't mean they are going to be treated better in Brussels," said
Michelle O'Neill, who lobbies on behalf of Hewlett-Packard here.

If anything, being an American company in Europe is a liability these days. Some
American business practices are regarded with deep suspicion here, in light of the
corporate accounting scandals and what many Europeans see as the Bush
administration's high-handed and unilateralist policies on the environment and Iraq.

"I don't think that Europeans are in the mood — or will be in the mood for some time to
come — to swallow what the Americans tell them about the way things are going to go,"
said Giles Merritt, who runs Friends of Europe, a research group that receives money
from the European Union.

Earlier this year, the European Union adopted two rules that companies in the United
States estimate will cost them hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The first will
prohibit electronics makers from using lead, mercury and other heavy metals in their
products. The second will require the makers of consumer electronics and household
appliances to pick up the bill for recycling their products. Since last year, automakers
have had to take responsibility for recycling the cars they sell.

Broader and costlier rules are in the works. Among them are a requirement that
chemical makers run safety and environmental impact tests on more than 30,000
chemicals; the industry has said that the rule could cost it more than $7 billion. The
commission is also considering prohibiting consumer products companies from
directing television commercials at children. And it is looking at passing a law to
encourage manufacturers to cut the energy used and greenhouse gases generated in
making their products. It also wants to reduce the number and volume of hazardous
chemicals in products made in Europe.

The breadth of the legislation is confounding critics who had accused the European
Union of picking on prominent American companies like Microsoft or General Electric
simply to protect inefficient competitors in Europe. Instead, it appears that Brussels is
doing something more sweeping: it is taking on the way America does business.

"If you compare E.U. policy now, it looks a lot like America in the 1970's," said David J.
Vogel, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies
environmental and business regulation in the United States and Europe. "In this new
generation of environmental issues the E.U. is moving quite aggressively, while U.S.
policy is stalemated."

In Washington, corporate lobbying has weakened or killed legislation aimed at
regulating tobacco, pharmaceuticals and pollutants that contribute to global warming. In
all three cases, the affected industries spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and
advertising, all to persuade lawmakers that regulation restricted the free market and
would hurt American business.

Such tactics would not play well in Europe, where there is a long history of state
intervention in the economy and where senior government officials are usually more
highly regarded than are corporate executives.

"If you go on the offensive in Europe it backfires and you lose on all fronts," said Erik
Jonnaert, the chief lobbyist here for Procter & Gamble.

American companies can ill afford such losses in a big market that is about to become
bigger: after 10 nations join the European Union next year, the rule makers here will
represent more than a half-billion consumers.

In the European Union, measures often seek to avert harm before it occurs. By contrast,
regulation in the United States often responds to a crisis; the recent Sarbanes-Oxley
legislation, for example, tightened corporate accounting rules after the Enron and
WorldCom scandals.

Margot Wallstrom, the European Union's environment commissioner, summed up the
European approach when she praised plans to require companies to run safety tests on
the chemicals they sell and in most cases have sold for decades.

"No longer do public authorities need to prove they are dangerous," she said at a recent
conference on the chemicals legislation. "The onus is now on industry" to demonstrate
that the products they sell are safe, she added.

[knip]

THE biggest difference in Brussels and Washington, lobbyists here say, is that American
politicians rely far more on corporate donations to finance their election campaigns.
Further, the revolving-door phenomenon, a virtual institution in Washington where
former officials go to work for the industries they once regulated, is far less common in
Brussels.
(Cees: In de VS worden niet alleen politici, maar in de diverse staten (Federale worden
benoemd) zelfs rechters en aanklagers gekozen, die dan ook geld krijgen toegestopt
door o.a. bedrijven voor hun verkiezingsfondsen. Halliburton -het bedrijf waar Cheney
vandaan komt- heeft dan ook Texaanse rechters enkele duizenden dollars toegestopt.
Halliburton wint dan ook bijna alle rechtzaken waar ze in gemoeid zijn. Moeten goeie
advokaten hebben :).

The Bush administration regularly weighs in against European regulations that it sees as
hurting business. Rockwell A. Schnabel, the United States ambassador to the European
Union, called for "smart regulation" that "meets society's objectives without strangling
innovation and growth."

Many Europeans are still angry at the Bush administration for its rejection of the Kyoto
protocol, an agreement created to curb global warming. Jorge Moreira da Silva, a
member of the European Parliament from Portugal, said he hoped to turn the tables on
President Bush. Mr. Moreira da Silva is shepherding legislation on emissions trading, a
market-based incentives plan that the European Union is considering even though the
United States has not yet signed on to the agreement.

[knip]

Groet,

Cees Binkhorst - cees at binkhorst.xs4all.nl

Steven Wright: Remember that half the people you know are below average.

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