



WASHINGTON – United States Trade Representative Susan

C. Schwab announced today that the United States has requested World

Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement consultations with the European

Union (EU) regarding the duties they are imposing on certain products that

should be duty-free under the WTO Information Technology Agreement

(ITA).





“It is critical that

the European Union live up to its ITA obligations instead of imposing new taxes

and duties on innovative technologies,” Schwab said. “The EU should be

working with the United

States to promote new technologies, not finding

protectionist gimmicks to apply new duties to these products. Therefore,

we urge the EU to eliminate permanently the new duties and to cease manipulating

tariffs to discourage technological innovation.”





Japan also announced today that it has requested

dispute settlement consultations with the EU on this

matter.





Background





The EU in the past

several years has adopted a series of measures that resulted in new duties on

imports of specific high-tech products – cable and satellite boxes that can

access the internet, flat panel computer monitors, and certain computer printers

that can also scan, fax and/or copy. Global exports of these products were

estimated at over $70 billion in 2007.

These electronic

products were included in the ITA. The ITA is a plurilateral agreement

negotiated under the auspices of the WTO in 1996 that eliminated duties/import

tariffs on a wide range of information technology

products.





These IT products

are used by millions of people every day, and produced by both developed and

developing countries. However, the EU claims it can now charge duties on

these products simply because they incorporate newer technologies or additional

features.





In effect, the EU is

taxing innovation – a move that could impair continued technological development

in the information technology industry and raise prices for millions of

businesses and consumers.





The United

States has raised its concerns with EU

officials on repeated occasions over the past 20 months in both bilateral and

multilateral settings. The issue has been the subject of at least four

rounds of informal discussions under the auspices of the WTO ITA Committee in

Geneva over the

previous year.





The first step in a

WTO dispute is for both parties to formally consult. If consultations fail

to resolve the dispute within 60 days, the United

States will be entitled to request that a panel

be established to determine whether the EU is acting consistently with its WTO

obligations.





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