Russian Invasion Intensifies Role of New U.S.-EU Tech Council

Now, knowledge gained in preparing those sanctions will help shape the agenda for the TTC’s second meeting near Paris on Monday, said officials from both sides.

Cooperation and trust developed in the TTC “helped us to coordinate very efficiently and impose export controls in a very short time and a coordinated way between the EU and U.S.” against Russia, European Commission Executive Vice President

Valdis Dombrovskis

said at a meeting with U.S. Trade Representative

Katherine Tai

in Washington last month.

Underpinning the meeting is a growing belief in Washington, in Brussels and among other allies that like-minded free-market democracies must work together to respond to the challenges posed by authoritarian regimes.

In Pittsburgh, much of the focus revolved around threats to Western economies from China, such as subsidies for semiconductors and other favored industries.

The U.S. was represented by Secretary of State

Antony Blinken,

Commerce Secretary

Gina Raimondo

and Ms. Tai, and the EU by Mr. Dombrovskis and fellow Commission Executive Vice President

Margrethe Vestager,

who all plan to meet for dinner near Paris Sunday.

In addition to Beijing’s expanding role in the digital world, other topics included cooperation on semiconductor-supply chains, export controls on sensitive technologies and misuse of technology threatening security or human rights.

Lower-level officials quickly dug into 10 working groups, swapping contact details and arranging meetings. Within weeks, after U.S. intelligence showed Moscow was planning to invade Ukraine, many of those budding trans-Atlantic relations formed the basis of sanctions planning, say officials from both sides.

When Russia launched its attack on Feb. 24 and Western allies within days unveiled unparalleled responses, U.S. and EU officials said their fast reaction was only possible thanks to groundwork set at the TTC and parallel negotiations defusing disputes over aviation subsidies, steel tariffs and digital data.

“What we’ve seen on sanctions is an unprecedented level of cooperation between the European Commission and the United States,” Mark Gitenstein, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, said in March.

Alignment still has limits, such as over energy and environmental policies.

Europe is far more exposed to the economic impact of Moscow’s war in Ukraine than the U.S. is because many large EU countries rely on imports of Russian gas and oil. Washington, meanwhile, has been more hesitant than Brussels to embrace a transition to green renewable-energy sources.

Officials on both sides say that current cooperation could fade if political power in Washington shifts after the midterm elections in November or the presidential election in 2024.

Still, both sides see lessons from the past year.

To make sanctions work, U.S. and EU officials spent more than three months deepening their understanding of each other’s financial regulations, export-control regimes and foreign-investment rules.

Seeking to achieve common goals despite differing legal systems, they developed a new approach focused on results—including denying Moscow access to advanced semiconductors and cutting Russia out of the global financial grid—rather than comparing legal texts or fighting over regulatory jurisdictions, as had sometimes been the case regarding sanctions in the past.

EU specialists boosted cooperation with counterparts at obscure U.S. offices like the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees export regulations.

Work standing up the TTC “created a level of trust” that permitted that cooperation, said a senior Commission official, voicing a view echoed by U.S. officials.

In a sign of that push beyond trans-Atlantic ties, European Commission President

Ursula von der Leyen

last week visited Tokyo to strengthen EU ties with Japan, and President Biden held a summit with countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The Biden administration’s earlier focus on Europe sometimes frustrated Washington’s Asian allies such as Japan and South Korea, whose officials were also eager to resolve tariff disputes from the Trump administration and start discussing broader policies to respond to China’s growing economic influence in their region.

The administration is negotiating with friendly Asia-Pacific nations to establish a forum called the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, or IPEF, to address issues such as digital trade, supply-chain resilience and green technologies. Together with the TTC, the new grouping in Asia will form the core of Washington’s emerging approach to coordinating economic strategies with friendly nations to counter nonmarket nations, including China and Russia.

“On some issues, like trade and competitiveness, this will involve bringing together partners that are committed to a set of core values and principles,” Treasury Secretary

Janet Yellen

said recently. She advocated building a “network of plurilateral trade agreements” to address today’s growing economic challenges, especially in digital services.

The Asia-Pacific framework will include features similar to the TTC but might prove trickier to negotiate because of the varying levels of economic development among countries in the region and their closer links to the Chinese economy, analysts say.

The TTC and sanctions alignment might also yield deeper trans-Atlantic cooperation outside the body’s remit, such as regulating tech giants, social media and digital commerce.

The EU is in the process of adopting two major pieces of legislation, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, and Congress is considering bills covering many of the same issues. Officials in Washington and Brussels are in frequent contact over legal texts, areas of focus and enforcement methods.

“Collaboration on Ukraine is a good example of how we should be cooperating on other societal challenges,” said

Jim Steyer,

chief executive of Common Sense Media, a U.S. advocacy group whose mission is “to make the digital world work better for all kids.”

Mr. Steyer, who was in Brussels this past week for meetings with lawmakers and would like the U.S. to adopt legislation similar to the EU’s new rules, described the recent approach as “putting your petty differences aside, and not just on a one-time basis.”

Write to Daniel Michaels at [email protected] and Yuka Hayashi at [email protected]