Meeting between EUCOCIT & ESF

Friday October 16^th, 2009

Board members of EUCOCIT and leading members of the Toronto business community met at the offices of Dale & Lessmann LLP with Pascal Kerneis, Managing Director, European Services Forum ESF on October 16^th, 2009.

The purpose of the meeting was to introduce ESF to EUCOCIT and to have him explain some of the concerns that the ESF Members have about the current negotiations with Canada.

These include the strength of the Provinces in negotiations (e.g. the lack of a unified position on accreditation of professions), together with protectionism in some areas, especially Canada's Nationally Government run Post Office, which he said was a major hurdle.

Other concerns were, easier access to “public procurement", work permits, telecommunication ownership, air transportation, the energy sector and automotive insurance. He believes that the aim should be for a truly free market which would make business easier and legal security to investors.

Following his presentation there was a lively debate on these topics and he promised to keep in touch with EUCOCIT and update the organization on the progress.

His final comment was that EUCOCIT was in an ideal position to help with advocacy as its members were in the front line of business and may be able to help direct government thinking in certain areas.

About ESF

The European Services Forum is an organization representing service industries across the European Community. The membership comprises more than thirty European trade federations and more than forty international companies based in countries which are members of the European Community.

Membership covers all member countries of the European Union and covers a wide range of service industries including banking, insurance, telecommunications, postal and delivery services, shipping, tourism and hotels, retail distribution, legal services, accountancy, management consultancy, architects, engineers, surveyors, IT services, publishing, audio-visual, energy services and environmental services. The European Services Forum was a registered NGO at the WTO Ministerial Conferences in Seattle (USA) in December 1999, Doha (Qatar) in November 2001, Cancun (Mexico) in September 2003 and Hong Kong (Hong Kong -China) in December 2005 and was also an official member of the European Union delegation during these conferences.

World trade in commercial services accounts for 20% of world exports, but services account for 60% of annual flows of foreign direct investment. Domestically, the service sector dominates most developed economies in the world and is the largest sector in the economies of the developing world. The European Services Forum, therefore, strongly supports and encourages the movement to liberalize service markets throughout the world and to remove both trade and investment barriers. The ESF recognizes that there is strong evidence to support the view that liberalizing service industries such as telecommunications, financial services and power distribution brings benefits to both the developed and developing world. However, the ESF also believes that liberalization needs to be accompanied by a regulatory infrastructure which encourages transparency, competition and fairness. The liberalization process should be a managed process, which takes into account the social and cultural background of the liberalizing country.

The European Union is the world’s largest exporter of commercial services accounting for 26% of total global services transactions and for more than 40% in terms of balance of payments. The European Union is also the world’s largest importer of commercial services. European service industries therefore have a key interest in playing a major part in the new round of multilateral negotiations.

The ESF supports a comprehensive round of negotiations because it believes that countries have different priorities in the WTO negotiations and therefore there will not be a wide agreement without a comprehensive round.

The European Services Forum works closely with other organizations representing service industries in the developed and the developing world.