Pictured: Members of German Parliament together with industry leaders representing HP, Microsoft, SAP, General Electric, Yelp, Dell, Amazon, eBay, Oracle, Unity Media, Sky, AmCham Germany, Policynavigation

Earlier this week, eBay was honored to host a delegation of German Members of Parliament and private sector representatives at our San Jose headquarters, in coordination with the American Chamber of Commerce Germany. The visit was part of AmCham Germany’s annual trip to Silicon Valley, allowing companies to meet with key players in technology policy.

This article originally appeared on the eBay Inc. blog.

For the past 20 years eBay has played a major role in advancing commerce and technology through unique innovations. 

eBay Senior Manager for Global Regulatory and Policy Management Mike Carson

Present and past award winners with the Honorable Bardish Chagger, Minister of Small Business and Tourism, and Andrea Stairs, Managing Director for eBay Canada

eBay continues to work closely with members of the U.S. and Canadian governments in an effort to improve opportunities for small businesses that use eBay to export. Currently, individual countries enact de minimis thresholds to determine the value for goods that can be imported before customs dues and paperwork are required. The current U.S. de minimis is $200 with Congress discussing a proposed increase to $800. In Canada, the de minimis threshold remains at $20 – a value established in the early 1980’s.

The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting is underway in Davos, Switzerland and the participants include eBay CEO Devin Wenig. In recent years trade, economic development and globalization have all been major topics of discussion at the event, in addition to being subjects of great importance to eBay.

Today the European Parliament (EP) adopted its report on the Digital Single Market. This non-legislative report was driven by Member of European Parliament Kaja Kallas from Estonia, who has been a strong supporter of our Digital Single Market efforts in the EU.

This week an important memorandum of understanding was signed at Palazzo Chigi in Rome. In a recent Facebook post Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi discussed this important memorandum in detail. The memorandum outlines an agreement between the Ministry for agricultural policies and the Intesa Sanpaolo bank aimed at providing significant investments for the Italian agricultural and food industries.

This article originally appeared on the eBay Inc. blog.

By: Brian Bieron, Executive Director eBay Public Policy