Introduction: fundamentals of an enduring relationship

The fundamentals of the EU–US relationship can be summarised as follows:

• Since its inception post World War II, the European unification process has been embedded within a strong transatlantic dimension [Marshall-Plan (1947); Truman/Eisenhower/Monnet; Kennedy/Hallstein].

• Today, the EU–US relationship is still the most powerful, the most comprehensive and the strategically most important relationship in the world. The EU and the US combine some 60 per cent of the world's GDP, with the EU having overtaken the US numbers of around US$10 trillion recently. They represent around 40 per cent of world trade in goods and even more in services. They hold 80 per cent of the global capital markets. They are each other's main trading partner and source, as much as recipient, of foreign direct investment.

• There is scarcely an issue that does not involve the transatlantic relationship – from Afghanistan to biotech, from WTO negotiations to counterterrorism, from data privacy to aircraft – the EU and US are involved bilaterally, regionally or globally. Europe matters to America, and America matters to Europe, because of major converging concerns, largely compatible values and overlapping interests. The EU and the US share common objectives with regard to coherent strategies for the promotion of peace, stability and economic development around the globe. There is – in the short and medium term – no alternative to the EU–US relationship.

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