September 12, 2023 – 9 am ET / 15:00 CET
Please join the GW Law Government Procurement Law Program for a free webinar on the European Union’s efforts to simplify vendor qualification through the Access2Procurement tool. The tool — which now covers the United States too — allows vendors to check if they may participate in a public procurement competition outside the EU, quickly and simply.
Members of the European Commission staff and the European-U.S. business community: Lucian Cernat, Head of Global Regulatory Cooperation and International Procurement Negotiations in Brussels, will discuss how the online tool works, and how it can open transborder trade in procurement. He will be joined by Yvonne Bendinger-Rothschild, executive director of the European-American Chamber of Commerce’s New York chapter, who will discuss the tool’s benefits for the business community.
Resources
Lucian Cernat, Trade Policy 2.0 and Algorithms: Towards the “Easification” of FTA Implementation (2021PE-05, Perspectives (2020-2021), CIRANO.) Abstract: The EU is the trading bloc with the most extensive network of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs). These trade agreements offer tremendous market access opportunities for EU companies. However, FTAs are becoming increasingly complex. Therefore, in trying to cover many trading partners and a growing range of trade-related issues, a critical question emerges: how easy is it for EU firms to understand and take advantage of FTAs? This is a crucial question since a perfectly negotiated FTA offering optimal trade conditions would be useless if no exporter would make use of it. One effective way to facilitate FTA implementation is to rely on a combination of firm-level Trade Policy 2.0 combined with the use of algorithms to codify trade rules in simple online tools for SMEs. This paper describes two concrete examples (ROSA and Access2Procurement) deployed by the EU to “easify” the FTA implementation and ensure that companies can understand their provisions and take advantage of their benefits.
PanelistS
Dr. Lucian Cernat is the Head of Global Regulatory Cooperation and International Procurement Negotiations at DG Trade, European Commission. With more than 20 years of experience in the trade policy field, he was previously the Chief Trade Economist at the European Commission, in charge of economic advice on EU trade policy, influencing over 4.5 trillion euros of EU trade flows annually. He is a frequent speaker at high-level events alongside award-winning economists and his publications were quoted in leading international journals (Financial Times, Wall Street Journal) and other media. He is also a regular VoxEU columnist, writing on various trade-related topics.
Until 2008, Dr Cernat held various positions at the United Nations in Geneva dealing with trade and development issues. He has written extensively on the development impact of trade policies, WTO negotiations, EU preferential market access, regional trade agreements, competition policy, and corporate governance. Prior to his UN experience, he was a trade negotiator with the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Dr. Lucian Cernat obtained his PhD from the University of Manchester and a postgraduate diploma from Oxford University.
Yvonne Bendinger-Rothschild joined the European American Chamber of Commerce New York Chapter as its Executive Director in October 2010. During her career she has worked with and consulted for a number of non-profits and for-profits and was able to significantly contribute to their growth by raising their public profiles, geographic footprint and relevance within their respective industries. In those roles she has worked with clients and partners across the US, in Europe, Latin America and Asia.
Yvonne grew up in Germany, and she sees herself as a European, dedicated to the idea that Europe needs to think, act and be regarded as one entity. In her role at the EACC she focuses on promoting an active transatlantic discourse and to engage the business communities on both sides in a meaningful dialog, to create profitable partnerships and to provide a professional platform to exchange ideas.
Education: Yvonne Bendinger-Rothschild is a graduate of the University of Applied Science in Ludwigshafen, Germany where she earned a Master of Business Administration with a focus on Marketing and Controlling/Finance. She is fluent in German and English, has a working knowledge of French and basic skills in Spanish.
Memberships & Affiliations: Yvonne Bendinger-Rothschild is a member of Bretton Woods Committee‘s Future of Finance Working Group. She is a fellow at the Tribeca Disruptor Foundation and a member of the Corporate Advisory Committee at International Property Tax Institute (IPTI) and the Transatlantic Business & Investment Council [TBIC]; she is also a member of the Economic Club of New York and the Bretton Woods Committee’s “Future of Finance” Working Group.
Yvonne works closely with the EACC board, its members and colleagues in the other EACC chapters on a variety of initiatives to keep the organization dynamic, relevant and forward-looking.
Her priority is to create value for its membership and help grow the organization and its influence on both sides of the Atlantic. To that extend she is spearheading EACC’s international expansion strategy and is working with partners across the U.S. and Europe to identify & develop suitable locations and collaborators to expand the EACC chapter network.
Moderator
Prof. Christopher Yukins – GW Law School – Government Procurement Law Program