This week the Swedish Foreign Ministry organized a half-day workshop on the topic of how to ensure forward-looking and innovation-friendly EU legislation on trade in goods and services. Hanne Melin of eBay Inc.'s Policy Lab was among the invitees from private sector, lawmakers, authorities and academia.

With the workshop, the Ministry wanted to seek out new ideas from stakeholders in a structured yet informal format. The participants were organized into smaller groups, and three work sessions stimulated debate on issues such as EU competitiveness, the challenges of globalization, and digital trade patterns.

Melin led the discussions of one of the groups. Sharing her group's discussions with all the workshop participants, Melin emphasized:

• Do not turn to regulation as a default option for solving a market problem. What more flexible methods should instead be explored? Beneficial market behavior and developments can be stimulated, for example, through new communication links, better knowledge, enhanced feedback mechanisms. The use of less conventional methods is not the easy route but worth pursuing to not lock in innovation, predetermine events, select "winning" business models and technologies.
• Forward the courageous lawmaker! Policymakers should be "bold about the vision of goals and objectives, while more modest yet flexible about the particular programs and tools used to accomplish them" (Richard Whitt) - how to achieve the objectives in the context of market activities should be for companies to explore. This is the opposite of traditional "command-and-control" regulation. It requires structures for trust and courage to let events unfold.
• Co-ordinate internationally, and in particular with the US. International trade agreements can serve as a mechanism for furthering, and achieving respect for, high standards and expectations in terms of quality, environmental-impact, safety, and longevity of products, production processes, business and consumer behavior. An EU-US trade agreement (“TTIP”) could be a force encouraging positive global development and providing a platform for strengthening the competitiveness of both the EU and the US.