The European Commission on Tuesday introduced new trade principles aimed at curbing China’s ability to squeeze European economies and preventing European companies from exporting sensitive military-related technology that could give China an advantage. announced.
While the policy is still in its early stages, it highlights how the European Union is trying to keep pace with the United States in restricting China’s access to classified markets and industrial secrets. It also reflects growing concerns about a deepening alliance between Beijing and Moscow.
The announcement in Brussels came in a busy week for relations between Europe and China. Chinese Premier Li Qiang is visiting Germany and met with Prime Minister Olaf Scholz and business leaders on Tuesday before heading to a conference in France.
The initiative also explores how the European Union, one of the world’s largest economies and an important trading partner for both China and the United States, will manage its economic dependence on the Chinese government and how it will deal with Russia after its invasion. It emphasizes that it is trying to avoid a situation such as economic disruption in the United States. Ukraine.
The Commission, an EU executive branch, said in a 14-page report. document Poor coordination among member states and weak trade rules could put adversaries under economic pressure on EU countries and manufacturers, he said, which needed to be dealt with urgently.
“Our nation’s national security is deeply tied to our ability to be economically secure and resilient more than ever,” the paper said.
The document never mentions China or any particular country, but rather “a concerned destination for deploying a civil-military integration strategy.”
In comments to reporters, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the policy was “country agnostic” and called for a thorough review of how the European Union interacts with the big economies. He said it was not intended. Rather, “we are looking at a limited number of cutting-edge technologies,” he said, “and here we want to make sure they don’t bolster the military power of some countries of concern.” added.
But European diplomats said the proposed economic strategy was clearly about China. It will probably take months of discussion before any concrete policy is reached, but he said it was an important first step to prevent economic targets from undermining the security of the European Union.
Still, diplomats said Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands, the region’s largest economies, were reluctant to see what could be Brussels’ disruptive intervention in key economic ties with China. These concerns could water down the committee’s proposals.
Silence was maintained at Tuesday’s meeting in Germany to sidestep the question of Germany’s economic dependence on China. More than one million German jobs are directly dependent on China, and almost half of Germany’s manufacturing industries rely on China for part of their supply chains.
After the meeting at the prime minister’s office, Mr. Scholz and Mr. Lee read out a statement but did not take questions.
“Face-to-face dialogue, personal conversation, genuine interaction, these are all more important than ever during this extraordinary time of global challenges and crises,” Scholz said, addressing thorny issues. opted to avoid it and instead focus on climate and green energy.
“We are not interested in economic decoupling from China,” he said. Scholz also avoided mentioning de-risking economic ties with China, a gentle approach to easing dependencies that are rapidly gaining prominence in diplomatic terms.
But Lee brought up the term. later in the day. “Imposing discriminatory measures in the name of risk aversion to limit or exclude other countries is against market principles, fair competition rules and World Trade Organization rules,” Lee said, according to the DPA. . German news agency.
Under the European Commission’s proposals on economic security, the European Union would bar potentially hostile countries and their companies from certain critical infrastructure such as ports and pipelines, and would prevent European Union companies from selling high-tech products for potential military applications. export to hostile countries should be prohibited.
The document also prevents the supply chains of security-critical goods from being overly dependent on such countries, and prevents the “leakage” of unique European technologies in artificial intelligence, chip manufacturing or biotechnology. purpose.
The Member States have already introduced a set of rules to address some of these concerns, but the Commission said better and stricter rules were needed and they should be shared with 27 countries with the same enthusiasm. and should be applied with standards. The purpose, according to the document, is to ensure that there are no backdoors that make Europe less secure.
“More rapid and coordinated action is needed at EU level in the field of export controls,” the proposal said, adding that “the uncontrolled expansion of national controls by member states would create loopholes.” .
Some European countries have already strengthened trade ties with China, and earlier this year the Netherlands banned ASML’s advanced chip-making technology from being exported to China, citing security concerns.
China is also considering sanctions because it provides Russia with chips that are used in weapons deployed against Ukraine.
Christopher F. Schutze Contributed to a report from Berlin.
