29^th June 2006

EU-US SUMMIT ADDRESSES TRADE IN ARCHITECTURAL SERVICES

At the recent EU-US Summit (Vienna, 21^st June) the topic of trade in architectural services was discussed with a specific reference to the Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) that was signed by the European and American architectural professional organisations in November 2005. Furthermore, during a high level meeting between representatives of the European services sector and the European Commissioner for Trade, Peter Mandelson on the 27^th June, in which the importance of achieving substantial liberalisation in trade in services for a successful Doha Round was emphasised, the ACE was able to report that the MRA had been ratified in the interim by the State Architectural Registration Boards of the United States of America with a positive vote of 50 to 1.

Following this meeting, Peter Mandelson issued a Press Release indicating that he will be pushing for an ambitious agreement in the negotiations on trade in services in the context of the informal stock-taking on services negotiations with 20 Ministers which he has invited in Geneva on the 1^st July next.

The ACE [1] has been a prime motivator and participant in the advances that have been made in relation to increasing the priority being given to increased trade in services on the global stage through its bi-lateral negotiations with the main trading partners of the EU.  This work has already led to the signing of profession-to-profession Mutual Recognition Agreements with Mexico and the USA. Negotiations with Canada are at an advanced stage and negotiations with Chile and China have been initiated, and it is planned to target countries like Cuba and Hong-Kong. The ACE considers the MRAs to be first, useful and probably necessary steps in achieving effective market access in a context of globalisation having regard to the diversity of situations that characterise the architectural profession, notably in the absence of harmonised education.

The architectural profession has always believed strongly in the benefits of international exchanges in the creation of quality in the built environment and has always been a highly mobile profession. This tradition has led the ACE to succeed in getting the architectural profession to be one of the spearhead professions in the evolution of negotiations on the global level. It is for this reason that architectural services featured at the recent EU-US Summit in the context of the newly launched Initiative to enhance Transatlantic Economic Integration and Growth.

Furthermore the ACE has been able to secure the prominence of architectural services in the Doha Round negotiations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and was part of the delegation of the European Services Forum that met with Peter Mandelson, European Commissioner for Trade, to discuss the strong need to ensure an ambitious deal on trade in services. At that meeting the ACE had a chance to make a short intervention in which the long tradition of architects in cross-border movement of people and services was emphasised and in which it was pointed out that there is a paradox in a time of globalisation with a situation where market access in Third Countries is not easy due to domestic regulation issues. In particular, emphasis was put on difficulties of market access in countries such as the USA, China and on the Mode 4 issue, a topic which Commissioner Mandelson had picked up in his introductory statement to the representatives of the European Services Forum.

The ACE also expressed disappointment at the poor offers made in the Doha multilateral process and expressed hope and confidence that the Collective Request that has been made on Architectural Services (Plurilateral process) earlier this year probably offers more potential, despite the position of the USA – also signatories of the request - on Mode 4 (lack of request/commitment).  The Commissioner will now bring the message of the services sector to the ministerial stock-taking exercise scheduled for the 1^st July next.

For further information please contact the Secretariat of the ACE by email at: info@ace-cae.org or by visiting www.ace-cae.org

[1] The ACE is the professional representative organisation of the architectural profession in Europe. It has 42 Members who are the representative and regulatory architectural bodies from all of the EU Member States, the Accession States and Norway and Switzerland. It therefore represents, through its Members, about 450,000 architects across Europe.