U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog: Trans Atlantic Consumer Meeting

I am in Brussels for the 8th Annual Meeting of the TransAtlantic Consumers Dialogue. The TACD is a forum that allows leading consumer advocacy groups of the U.S. and Europe to regularly consult with senior officials of the European Union and U.S. governments on a variety of important matters. The organization was established to balance the influence of the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue.

On Monday, I am scheduled to provide the TACD response to plenary session remarks by U.S. Ambassador C. Boyden Gray (US EU Mission bio page). The ambassador is a strong proponent and architect (Sourcewatch article) of the Bush administration's push for weaker consumer and environmental laws , including its strident opposition to the PIRG-backed European chemical safety law known as REACH (PIRG comments on REACH, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) report The Chemical Industry, the Bush Administration, and European Efforts to Regulate Chemicals documenting U.S. opposition efforts, recent Gray speech and WSJ op-edit on REACH, TACD REACH platform).

The ambassador will likely also discuss the notion of regulatory cooperation, which has the potential to help consumers and businesses, but at its worst is a vehicle for mutual deregulation. Here's TACD's February 2007 Position Paper and Resolution on Horizontal Regulatory Initiatives in EU-US Regulatory Cooperation. I will post more information as the meetings continue.

On Tuesday, we have an open conference on emerging privacy issues related to both RFID and so-called ubiqitious computing, "when technology recedes into the background of our lives" (a mediocre summary by me-- when everything has a chip, and computers do everything, even if you don't see them, what are the societal implications--privacy and what else?).