SLOVENIA ON US-EU ECONOMIC SUMMIT

UNCLAS LJUBLJANA 000398 SIPDIS DEPT FOR EUR/NCE, EB/TPP/IPE DEPT PLEASE PASS TO USTR/ERRION USEU FOR CHRIS WILSON E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ECON ETRD ECIN SI SUBJECT: SLOVENIA ON US-EU ECONOMIC SUMMIT REF: STATE 106113 ¶1. Econoff delivered reftel talking points 15 June to Robert Kokalj, Head of the Economic Diplomacy Division at the MFA. Kokalj took pains several times during his comments to state that Slovenia and the EU have "roughly the same ideas" as the U.S. on transatlantic economic cooperation and growth. He indicated that the Slovenia mission to the EU wanted to ensure Kokalj communicated to Econoff that the EU would like to transfer the "global partnership" the U.S. and the E.U. enjoy in democracy and security to the economic agenda. ¶2. Kokalj noted that the EU was interested in inserting IPR language into an overall summit statement and did not support a "separate" declaration. Alluding to the "Irish music" case, Kokalj said the EU expected "these types of bilateral issues" to be solved prior to any U.S.-EU joint statement on IPR. Kokalj added, however, that the differences between the U.S. and EU positions were not great and hoped that we would soon be able to bridge the gap on what he termed "largely technical disputes." ROBERTSON NNNN 2005LJUBLJ00398 - Classification: UNCLASSIFIED v1.6.2