[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 41, Number 42 (Monday, October 24, 2005)]
[Page 1554]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Following Discussions With President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso 
of the European Commission

October 18, 2005

    President Bush. It's my pleasure to welcome back to the Oval Office 
my friend Jose Barroso. Welcome.
    President Durao Barroso. Thank you.
    President Bush. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to 
come and visit and talk about U.S.-EU relations. I told Jose that it's 
very important for the people in Europe to know that America values our 
relationship, wants the EU to succeed, wants to work in collaboration to 
achieve some big objectives. One is to lay the foundation for peace by 
spreading democracy and freedom. And I appreciate your understanding, 
and thank you for working closely on that.
    Secondly is to help enhance the prosperity of our respective 
countries as well as the world, through promoting free and fair trade. 
We talked about what it requires to get the Doha round moving forward. 
We had a good, frank discussion on that, and there's no question we 
share the same objective.
    We talked about what we can do to work together to move forward on a 
lot of issues. The main thing I came away from, again, is, one, I value 
Jose's leadership, his advice but also how important the relationship 
between the EU and the United States is and that we can achieve a lot of 
important things when we work together.
    So welcome back. Thank you for hosting me last winter. I'm proud to 
have you here.
    President Durao Barroso. Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure 
for me to be, once again, here in White House with President Bush. I 
thank him and the First Lady for their kind and friendly hospitality.
    As President Bush said, this relation is very important, most of all 
because we share exactly the same values of freedom, democracy, and 
human rights, and we complement each other in pushing forward this 
agenda, but also in economic terms. We have now a trade relation of more 
than $1 billion a day. So together, we are 40 percent of world trade. So 
we have a common interest in opening up markets. We very much in the 
European Union are looking forward for a success of those talks. We want 
it to have ambitious and balanced result on agriculture but not only in 
agriculture. I want to underline this point, services for instance, is 
very important, so that our citizens can really see the benefits of 
globalization. And we want to work together, the United States also, 
engaging others, emerging markets, but also thinking about less 
developed countries, engaging them constructively for this--the success 
of these talks.
    These were the main issues that I had the pleasure, once again, to 
discuss with President Bush in his very frank and friendly manner. I 
really believe we have a lot to do together, the European Union and 
United States.
    President Bush. Thanks, Jose. Appreciate you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:50 a.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House.