In a reversal of its initial stance regarding the U.S. Customs Service's Container Security Initiative (CSI), the European Commission (EC) announced its intention to negotiate a mutually acceptable arrangement for port security with the United States. The policy-making body of the European Union originally had opposed CSI, going so far as to initiate legal action against member countries that had agreed to participate in the program.

The commission objects to Customs' initial selection of a few large European ports for CSI participation because that could lead shippers to divert trade to non-CSI ports, thus pushing EU ports into unhealthy competition with each other. "We have always agreed with CSI in principle," says Maeve O'Beirn, press official with the European Union's Washington, D.C., delegation. "We fully understand the security concerns and we aim to co-operate, but we have our own concerns that this [should not] be a unilateral approach by the United States. From the beginning, our focus has been that this not cause trade distortion within the EU."

The commission must first bring its proposal, which would amend a 1997 customs cooperation agreement between the EU and the United States, before the European community to receive a mandate to negotiate over the CSI issue.

In a press release issued January 23, European Commissioner for Customs Frits Bolkestein noted that the proposal "demonstrates the commitment of the European Commission to maximizing security and to countering terrorist threats. [We want] to integrate the United States' preliminary unilateral measures into a set of commonly agreed actions which balance security needs with trade facilitation," he said.

The adoption of a mandate to negotiate a new agreement with the United States would put the brakes on legal action already underway to halt the CSI program in Germany, Belgium, France and the Netherlands.