But to the Europeans, our system is suspect. In particular, they are wary of our reliance on industry self-regulation. For the past 18 months, we have been negotiating with the EU in an attempt to bridge our differences. Given where we started, we have come a long way. And we are close but still have a lot of work to do.
Agreement is far from certain.
The stakes are high. The U.S.-EU commercial relationship is the largest in the world, by far. Beyond that, the very future of the vastly promising electronic commerce marketplace may well hang on whether we can find ways to bridge our differences. It's not a choice between privacy and electronic commerce. Privacy is essential for electronic commerce to flourish.