U.S. to File Trade Complaint in TV Dispute

The Bush Administration said Tuesday that it will take its complaint about new regulations urging European TV stations to reserve the bulk of their time for European-made television programs to an international disputes settlement organization.

U.S. Trade Representative Carla A. Hills said the United States will file formal proceedings on the case in the Geneva-based General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Officials said the U.S. complaint would be filed sometime in the next few days.

The action, which came in response to a refusal by the European Community to heed earlier U.S. protests over the programming allocation rules, apparently is designed as a further escalation to persuade the Europeans to change their policy.

Hills decided against a potentially more provocative strategy of citing the Europeans under the unfair trade practices provision of the Omnibus Trade Act approved last year by Congress. Under that provision, Washington could threaten to impose U.S. sanctions unilaterally if the Europeans did not meet American demands.

European governments and those of many other U.S. allies protested vigorously earlier this year when the Bush Administration used the provision. They charged that the United States was acting unilaterally to enforce its trade complaints, abandoning established international dispute settlement machinery such as GATT.

The dispute about TV programming is the latest in a series of disagreements--some of which have been settled amicably--between the two trading partners as the European Community moves toward integration of its economy into a single market by 1992.

That move is designed to eliminate border restrictions among the 12 countries of the existing European Common Market as well as several other European countries that in effect are associate members of the old customs confederation.

On other issues, the Europeans have agreed to satisfy U.S. objections. Several months ago, in response to protests from Washington, they softened a series of banking regulations that American officials contended would limit the operations of U.S. banks in Europe.

The TV programming dispute has become a more emotional issue, with Europeans contending that the restriction is necessary to protect European culture from being overrun by studios in America and other nations. European TV producers have felt unable to compete with the bigger, better-financed U.S. facilities.

But Hills asserted that the decision to reserve the bulk of the market for European-produced programs is “blatantly protectionist” and “unjustifiable” under international trade rules.

She dismissed the Europeans’ contention that they must protect their cultural identity as an “unpersuasive” excuse.

“We do not understand why the Spanish culture is more protected by a film produced in Germany by ‘Europeans’ than by a Spanish film of Mexican origin, or why the English culture is promoted more by a film produced in France by ‘Europeans’ than by a film of New Zealand origin,” Hills said in a statement. “The definition of ‘European works’ is economic, not cultural.”

It was not immediately clear how the United States might fare in any handling of the case by the 97-country GATT.