Calls for the restrictions on foreign ownership of US airlines to be reformed, and argues that the lack of reciprocity between EU and US rules in both maritime and air transport, as well as the ongoing imbalance between EU firms’ ability to undertake cabotage in the US market and US firms’ ability to do so here, is a hurdle that must be overcome in order to unlock the true potential of the transatlantic economic relationship;

- Strengthening dialogue and coordination with other regional processes such as the Ibero-American Summits, Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), Organisation of American States (OAS), etc. should be envisaged.

Calls for a strengthening of the international system of treaties and regimes against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; stresses the need for closer cooperation between the EU and the United States in combating terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, in compliance with international law, and for both sides to support the role that the UN must play in these areas; urges the Council to discuss with its US counterparts how to make a positive approach to future NPT Preparatory Committees (NPT PrepComs), as a first opportunity to strengthen the global non-nuclear proliferation regime in the run-up to ...[+++]the NPT Review Conference in 2010; underlines the need to discuss at the summit a number of nuclear disarmament initiatives based on the ‘13 practical steps’ agreed to unanimously in the 2000 NPT Review Conference; hopes that at this summit the US Administration will be willing to adopt a common strategy with the EU aimed at making progress on disarmament in terms of both weapons of mass destruction and conventional weaponry; calls on the EU and the United States to avoid the potential vacuum in the period 2009-2010, when the major agreements on disarmament will be due to be renewed; hopes that the very important agreements reached in 1999, 2000 and 2001 with Russia will be maintained; calls on the United States to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) as a meaningful step towards reducing the operational relevance of nuclear weapons;

[9] A similar idea was proposed by President John F. Kennedy in his speech in Philadelphia on 4 July 1962: “. the United States will be ready for a Declaration of Interdependence, . we will be prepared to discuss with a united Europe the ways and means of forming a concrete Atlantic partnership, a mutually beneficial partnership between the new union now emerging in Europe and the old American Union founded here 175 years ago.

The study will be published today in the American Geophysical Union's journal, "EOS Transactions".

There was a huge debate between the fathers of the American union.