By Rachelle Younglai and Doug Palmer
WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) - The European Union took final steps on Friday to accept U.S. accounting rules, but was unable to resolve U.S. concerns over chicken trade and new EU rules on credit rating agencies.
At a meeting in Washington D.C. of high level U.S. and EU government officials, sides also agreed to take additional steps to cut the red tape that increases costs for companies.
The United States already recognizes accounting standards European companies use. Now that the EU will recognize U.S. rules, companies will most likely be able to cut costs by no longer having to convert to international accounting rules.
Top U.S. and EU drug regulators also agreed to place senior level experts within each other's offices to work on medical product regulatory issues.
The European Commission wants President-elect Barack Obama to agree to continue the Transatlantic Economic Council, created last year with the goal of creating a barrier-free transatlantic marketplace by 2015.
"It's moving in the right direction and I am quite confident that we will achieve a considerable reduction of trade barriers and investment barriers which exist," said EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, the co-chair of the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC).
"I'm very confident that it will continue," even though EU officials did not get meetings with incoming members of the Obama administration to make the case for the TEC, he said.
However, a number of issues important to the United States were not resolved.
No progress was made on the EU's decade-long ban on U.S. chicken imports, which was imposed because they are treated with chlorine wash.
"I think it's clear that the proposal developed by the commission satisfied neither Europe or the United States. One option to addressing the persistence of the import ban is to start over and work collaboratively together," said Daniel Price, TEC's U.S. co-chair and an assistant to President George W. Bush.
The U.S. failed to convince the EU to back down on plans to require that securities purchased in Europe be rated by a credit rating agency located in Europe.
Likewise, the EU remained steadfast with a plan to force banks that securitize in the EU to retain at least five percent of the securitized product that they sell.
"We maintained our concerns," said Price, deputy national security advisor for international economic affairs.
Trade between the EU and United States represents nearly 55 percent of world economic output and business groups want talks to continue as they say it could save industry billions of dollars in compliance costs.
The EU's top goal for the TEC next year is to convince Obama to persuade Congress to relax a law that requires foreign ports to scan every container headed to the United States beginning in 2012, Verheugen said.
Brussels estimates that law would affect 700 ports worldwide and disrupt 40 percent of world trade.
Its number two objective is to persuade Washington to scrap a U.S. requirement that all small appliances, like kettles, exported to America undergo local U.S. standard conformity tests which push up the price, he said. (Reporting by Rachelle Younglai and Doug Palmer)