Workshop on the Regulatory Powers of the European Union and Its Transatlantic Consequences
May 12th, 2006 at UC Berkeley
9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
119 Moses Hall-IGS Harris Room
The goal of the workshop is to examine the impact of EU regulations on US firms and on US legislation.
Researchers are realizing more and more that the regulatory powers of the European Union are quite strong and have an influence not only on Member States but also outside Europe. These regulatory powers have grown very much due to the intense legislative activity of the last 15 years at the level of the European Union. This legislative activity has developed with the Single Market Program aiming at harmonizing a great deal of EU legislation in order to remove non tariff barriers within the European Union. This has given de facto important regulatory powers to the EU which influence not only markets inside Europe but also outside Europe. This became clear with the indictment of Microsoft by the European Commission following an unsuccessful anti-trust case against the software company in the US.
The workshop will also discuss the EU's regulatory powers currently being discussed with the REACH regulation which aims at regulating chemical products, and the possibility of adapting the REACH regulation to California, which has generated interest among federal and state legislators in the US
This regulation is currently the object of intense lobbying by chemical firms. It is likely to have a huge influence on chemical firms throughout the world. Large chemical firms face the dilemma of adapting their products to the EU directive or to risk losing their share in the EU market. At the same time, REACH is generating a lot of interest among US legislators. There is the possibility of adapting the REACH regulation to California, a US state where pro-environment constituencies have always been very strong. REACH is a very salient example but there are other similar cases.
The regulation of oil prices is another case where the comparative analysis between the EU and the US is interesting.
Program
9:30 a.m. – 9:45 a.m. Introductory Remarks
Gerard Roland, Department of Economics and Political Sciences,UC Berkeley
9:45 a.m. – 10:15 a.m.History of the REACH regulation
Robert Donkers, Washington Delegation Environment Counselor
10:15 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.Presentation of the report for the State Assembly of California on Green Chemistry Policy
Michael Wilson, Assistant Research Scientist, UC Berkeley School of Public Health
10:45 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.Break
11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.Impact of the EU regulations on US companies
Michael Kirschner, President, Design Chain Associates, LLC
11:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.The current state of competition in the US gasoline market: Interaction of anti-trust, environmental, and
other regulations and policy proposals
James Bushnell, Research Director, UC Energy Institute
12:00 p.m. – 12:30 p.m.How "Old Europe" is wielding new world power?
Mark Schapiro – Editorial Director of the Center of Investigative reporting, specialist on the EU.
12:30 p.m. –14:00 p.m.Lunch discussion with the panelists.
Participants
James Bushnell, Research Director, UC Energy Institute. He holds a Ph. D. from the University of California, Berkeley in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. He teaches at the Haas School of Business. His research interests are Industrial Organization and Regulation, Environmental Economics, Energy Policy and Game Theoretic Optimization Models. He has published in Journal of Industrial Economics, American Economic Review, Energy Policy, Energy Policy among other journals. He has a chapter “Looking for Trouble: Competition Policy in the U.S. Electricity Industry.” in a book “Electricity Restructuring: Choices and Challenges” S. Puller and J. Griffen, Eds. University of Chicago Press. Forthcoming.
Robert Donkers, EU Washington Delegation Environment Counselor. Prior to his current position, Donkers served as acting and deputy head of the chemicals unit in the Environment Directorate-General (DG) of the European Commission, where his responsibilities included the coordination of the development of a new European Union (EU) chemicals policy and legislative framework. He also was the chief EU negotiator on the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, took part in the International Maritime Organization negotiations on the International Convention on the Control of Harmful Anti-fouling Systems on Ships, the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent and other United Nations negotiations and conferences related to chemical substances and sustainable development issues. Before joining the commission in 1990, Donkers held several positions in the Dutch administration, including deputy director for international environmental affairs in the Ministry of the Environment, and EU environment counselor for the Netherlands in Brussels.
Michael Kirschner, President, Design Chain Associates, LLC. Mike Kirschner has 24 years of extensive cross-functional experience in all phases of the product lifecycle, from conception through production and end-of-life at both Electronics OEMs and semiconductor suppliers. Prior to his current position, he held Engineering and Engineering Management positions at Compaq, Tandem, Intel, and Intergraph, as well as at several start-ups in Component Engineering, Quality Assurance, Software Development, and Product Design roles. Michael Kirschner received his BSEE from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA and is a member of the Institute for Supply Management. Mike is also on the Editorial Advisory Board of Electronics Supply & Manufacturing Magazine, a CMP publication.
Gérard Roland is Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Program Director at CEPR. He previously taught economics at Université Libre de Bruxelles. Roland’s research focuses on political and institutional economics, comparative and development economics.
He is author of Transition and Economics: Politics, Markets, and Firms (MIT Press), and a co-author of Built to Last: A Political Architecture for Europe (CEPR). He has published in the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, the American Journal of Political Science, European Economic Review, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives, among other journals. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Université Libre de Bruxelles.
Marc Schapiro, Editorial Director of the Center of Investigative reporting. He is focusing on environmental and corporate stories of international dimension. Prior to working at the CIR, Schapiro was a freelance writer and television reporter in New York City—specializing in international reporting. He has worked extensively in Latin America and Europe as a writer and editor. He was based in Prague as Deputy Editor of Transitions; and while based in Paris was the founding editor of InterNation, a consortium of journalists who conducted international investigations for publications in Europe and the United States. Schapiro lectures regularly on international and investigative reporting at UC Berkeley Graduate Journalism.His journalism has received numerous awards, including a Kurt Schork Award for International Reporting, a National Magazine Award and the H.L. Mencken Freedom of the Press Award.