The U.S. Chamber Doha Business delegation just finished a productive day of meetings in Brussels with EU Trade Officials from DG-Trade and the European Commission. We also met with European Business Groups-AmCham EU and Business Europe.

One of the key take aways from our meetings is that we need the EU and U.S. to work together to get the Doha Round to an "end game" negotiation. There is certainly a precedent for this in multilateral trade negotiations. During the Uruguay Round, the EU and U.S. went into a room together to talk about what the end game package needed to look like. That helped lead the impetus to conclude the Uruguay Round. This made sense because the EU and U.S. were THE key players in the negotiations.

Fast forward to 2009 and where we are on Doha. Just like Uruguay, the EU and U.S. are two of the key players in the negotiations. However, there are other key players as well that are going to be needed to help bring Doha to an end game scenario. The Group of 5 key players in Doha (G-5) includes the EU, U.S., Brazil, India, and China. Doha cannot be successfully concluded without an end game negotiation between these players.

EU officials expressed frustration that they do not have relevant counterparts in place in the Obama Administration. The Chamber shares these concerns as we have pushed for a rapid confirmation process for key trade officials, particularly at USTR and Commerce.

The most important take away from our meetings today was when a senior EU trade official told us that pushing the United States into a corner is not the way to get a Doha deal done. We could not agree more.

Off to Geneva, for our final leg of meetings with key WTO officials and WTO Ambassadors.