Top business leaders and government officials from the United States and Europe are gathering in a Chicago hotel today for the start of a two-day meeting likely to be dominated by political arm-twisting.
Chicago officials have spent three months preparing for the event at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, which is threatened to be marred by protest. The city wants to prevent violent outbreaks like those that disfigured recent meetings of the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.
But compared to the World Bank and the WTO, the Trans Atlantic Business Dialogue is relatively little known. It exists to enable chief executives to lobby leaders from the U.S. government and the European Union in hopes they will adopt harmonized and business-friendly regulations. The goal is to make transatlantic business and trade easier, smoother and more profitable.
Unlike most other big international meetings, only business and government officials–no trade unions, no non-governmental organization and no academics–will attend. Even the media is kept from most meetings, except for a few major speeches. Most items on the agenda are highly complex and bureaucratic, and there’s almost no attempt to sell the conference to the public.
Despite or because of this, it has been moderately successful in persuading the U.S. and EU to harmonize rules, so transatlantic businesses do not have to deal with multiple sets of regulations. It allows business a voice in creating new regulations.
Most of TABD’s lobbying goes on behind the scenes during the time between the annual conference. The conference helps set the agenda for the year ahead and alerts governments that the heads of some of the Western world’s mightiest companies are behind it.
TABD officials said the agenda at the Chicago conference would focus on five areas: capital markets, dispute management, economic concerns, regulatory policy and world trade.
Specifically, the executives want to harmonize international accounting standards and transatlantic antitrust laws, increase corporate access to government regulatory planning, boost e-commerce and support the new round of WTO trade talks, especially by minimizing post-Sept. 11 security measures that could slow transatlantic trade.
This year’s meeting will bring in top executives from 28 European companies including giants like Bayer, Siemens, Ericsson, Fiat and ThyssenKrupp, and from 32 American firms including Deere, Boeing, Deloitte & Touche and Estee Lauder.
They will be joined by 43 officials from the European Union and European governments, led by EU Commissioners Pascal Lamy and Erkki Liikanen, and 29 U.S. officials, led by Commerce Secretary Donald Evans.
TABD’s last conference, set for Stockholm, was canceled in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. The previous one, in Cincinnati, drew protesters and street violence that led to 53 arrests–one reason for Chicago’s elaborate security measures.
