Blog: Thoughts from my visit to the United States

I just concluded my visit to the US and taken off from Washington DC Dulles airport. I spent four intense days in Houston and DC. For the first time I participated in the Texas version of "Energy Davos" and was deeply inspired by the high quality of business leaders. My many meetings gave me the opportunity to highlight how much EU-US economic relationship has developed and the great impact is on jobs and growth on both sides of the Atlantic. For many of my US interlocutors this was big news.

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Across all my meetings, I was advocating to further strengthen the transatlantic relationship. I very much appreciated the suggestion of Secretary of Energy, R. Perry, that we should add to the well established EU-US Energy Council a strong business segment and focus on new innovation and technologies. I also welcomed the interest of Senator Barrasso in the EU energy security, the situation in Ukraine and the readiness to lower adminstrative barriers of US LNG exports to the EU. We brainstormed on the possibility to organise a new parliamentary event on LNG, where Congress, the European Parliaments and national parliaments could discuss these issues together with representatives of governments and business. I will gladly pass this message to my colleauge, Jerzy Buzek, Chairman of the European Parilament's Commitee on industry, research and energy (ITRE). Chairman Buzek has already organised a similar event already in the past.

I also had the chance to feel the very intense atmosphere in the White House, where the chief economic advisor to the US President, G. Cohn, was finalising the preparations for a big infrastructure forum. We spent a good amount of time togher, during which I explained how new clean technologies drive forward growth, jobs and create new business opportunities. All this is very relevant at this point in time, when the new US adminstration is reviewing the policies.

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The US is very well known for its high quality think tanks and vibrant non-governmental organisations. It is always very enriching to exchange views and and compare ideas with them. This time, I had very good meetings with the John Hopkins University, the Hudson Institute and the World Ressource Initiative. These meetings just reconfirmed my impressions that the EU-US relationship is strong, indispensible and therefore will grow even stronger.

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