This year’s EU-US Summit will take place in Brdo, Slovenia on Tuesday 10 June. The Summit will cover the full gamut of global and regional issues where the EU and the US seek to act in partnership. Issues for discussion will include assisting the development of Kosovo, following up on the Middle East peace initiative launched last year at Annapolis, shaping a comprehensive and binding post-2012 global agreement on tackling climate change, and working together to promote energy efficiency as well as energy security through the diversification of supply sources and the development of sustainable new forms of energy. Strengthening of the economic and regulatory cooperation and the deburdening of enterprises on both sides of the Atlantic will also be discussed, following the cooperation in this field in the framework of the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC). The EU will also be asking the US for an update on progress towards its commitment to bring further EU Member States into the US Visa Waiver Programme.

The Summit will also establish a forward-looking perspective for the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), which was created at last year's EU-US Summit. The TEC has already chalked up significant progress on a broad agenda, for instance on promotion of open investment regimes and equivalence of EU and US accounting standards. The European Commission will be pressing for the future work of the TEC to include key issues such as the mutual recognition of certification for electrical equipment, and potentially trade-disruptive US legislative proposals for the scanning of all US-bound containers.

Prior to the Summit, President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, said: “Over the past four years the EU-US Partnership has proven that it can deliver transatlantic responses to the big challenges of our day. We believe that it is particularly important to work with the US on climate change. The current oil and food price rises also show how important the EU-US cooperation is at a global level.”