On June 21, 2006, a U.S.-EU summit will take place in Vienna, Austria, involving President George W. Bush, European Council President (and Austrian Chancellor) Wolfgang Schuessel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.  Likely additional participants include Commissioner for External Relations and Neighborhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Commissioner for Trade Peter Mandelson, Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  Four main areas slated for discussion are: foreign policy, energy security, trade and global challenges.

Directly or indirectly, legal issues, or rule of law as a broad concept, could permeate relevant issues such as:

• The Iranian nuclear program, consideration of which is shaped in part by related international legal frameworks such as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), UN Charter, and the role of the UN system and its various elements such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and UN Security Council (UNSC).
• Other proliferation issues, such as efforts to develop stronger frameworks to keep weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from terrorists.
• War on terrorism detainee issues, such as Guantanamo Bay, rendition, and alleged CIA over-flights.
• Terrorist finance, requiring legally prescribed financial regulatory tools to disrupt, as well as immigration and border security issues such as the U.S. visa waiver program and whether it will be extended to all EU member states.
• Iraq nation-building, requiring as it does institution-building grounded on law and order, accountability, and respect for human rights, with the most dramatic transition away from Saddam Hussein being the aspiration for a government of laws and not of men, with sovereignty derived from the popular will expressed through democratic elections.
• Trade and foreign investment issues, including issues surrounding security-sensitive investment such as gave rise to controversy over the ill-fated Dubai Ports World effort to become involved with some U.S. port terminal operations as a by-product of acquiring British company P&O.

For its part, the White House has flagged the following priorities:

• nuclear proliferation
• terrorist finance
• democratization
• Iraq reconstruction
• promoting peace and democracy in Europe and beyond
• trade barriers
• energy security 

The European Union (EU) has highlighted:

• Iran, the Middle East and democratization
• trade: concluding negotiations of the Doha World Trade Organization (WTO) round
• foreign investment, with an eye towards maintaining open investment regimes
• intellectual property rights enforcement strategy for third countries, including joint U.S.-EU efforts to combat counterfeit/pirated goods
• extending the U.S. Visa Waiver Program to all EU citizens
• EU-U.S. strategic cooperation on energy and energy markets principles of good practices
• global climate change

The Transatlantic Declaration, adopted in 1990, formalized U.S.-EU contacts and set forth principles for greater U.S.-EU cooperation.  Click here to read its text.

Further reading:

“EU – US Summit, Vienna, 21 June 2006,” EU news release IP/06/795, June 19, 2006, http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?
reference=IP/06/795&format=HTML&aged=
0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

“EU – US Summit, Vienna, 21 June 2006,” EU web site,

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/external_relations/us/sum06_06/index.htm

National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, “Press Briefing by the National Security Advisor, Steve Hadley, on the President's Trip to Europe,” June 15, 2006, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/06/print/20060615-12.html

Wolfgang Proissl, Fidelius Schmid and Daniel Dombey “Barroso sees risk to EU from new US barriers,” Financial Times, June 20, 2006, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0922cbc0-0075-11db-8078
-0000779e2340.html

Secretary Condoleezza Rice, Remarks With Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos of Spain After Their Meeting, June 19, 2006, http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/68081.htm

“US-EU Summit: Vienna, Austria, June 21, 2006,” White House web site, http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/eusummit/index.html

“Transatlantic Declaration on EC-US Relations, 1990,” http://ec.europa.eu/comm/external_relations/us/
economic_partnership/declaration_1990.htm