Heeding Europe's call.

• Author: Richardson, Jeffrey
• Position: Alaska businesses are not aggressively seeking trade with Europe

Heeding Europe's Call

In 1992, the 12 nations of the European Economic Community will dismantle their remaining internal regulatory barriers and form a true common market. Though the media hype is heralding the milestone, the Western Europeans have moved diligently in this direction for decades.

Now, as the global implications of European economic union begin to dawn on entrepreneurs and policy makers from New York to Seattle, from Tokyo to Seoul, a growing number of American, Asian and European businesses are frantically positioning themselves to cash in on the anticipated opportunities.

This historic development does not create a new market as much as it makes access to 350 million Western European consumers a lot easier, and cheaper.

More specifically, benefits to American companies operating in Europe will include: increased enforcement of fair competition laws, quicker movement of new products into the marketplace, more effective deployment of human resources, freer competition in public procurement, standardization of business taxation, more competitive interest rates, an opportunity for companies with an existing presence to consolidate operations.

The economic marriage of sovereign nations from Britain to Greece probably surpasses any of the alliance-building vows taken by the crowned heads of Western Europe in bygone days (in economic implication, if not in glamour). But there's even more unfolding on the old continent.

Consider the parallel developments in the neighboring nations of Central Europe, basking and stretching in the bright sun of democracy for the first time in 40 years. Though not nearly as ready as their western neighbors to consider membership in such a union, a number have expressed interest in associate, and eventually full, membership in the European Community (EC). Add another 400 million consumers.

If the rest of the world is sitting up and taking notice of economically virile and newly awakened Europe, Alaska seems to be entirely absorbed with, some would say controlled by, the huge Asian marketplace. Any energy or resources left over for cultivating new international trading partnerships seems to be channeled almost exclusively across the Bering Straits to the economically beleaguered Soviet Union.

In fact, if you call the state's Office of International Trade and ask what it can tell you about the Alaska-Europe connection, you're bound to be told, in a nutshell, not too much. Recent inquiries to the trade office produced referral to a number of magazines with articles about the eC/1992; a copy of Alaska-Europe trade volume statistics covering the last three years; and material on the third Northern Regions Conference held in September.

Of the 250 Alaskan companies listed in the 1988-89 Alaska Trade Directory as doing some form of export business, less than 20 percent indicate they do business, or aspire to do business, in the European market. Of these, the vast majority are seafood processors for whom Europe is a distant second in importance after Asian markets.

A number of expert observers say...