No respite for the European Union. While negotiations on customs duties with the United States entered a critical phase, the president of the commission, Ursula von der Leyen, landed in China for a very thorny meeting with Xi Jinping.
Officially, this Beijing Summit is supposed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations. Not officially, Europeans arrive with a long list of litigation in which they expect to advance despite an increasingly tense climate with China.
“As our cooperation has deepened, imbalances have also accentuated. We reach a crucial moment. It is essential to rebalance our bilateral relations,” said the president of the committee after his arrival.
“We need concrete progress in questions related to commerce and economy, and we both want our relationship to be (…) mutually beneficial,” added Antonio Costa, president of the European Council, who accompanies Ursula von der Leyen in Beijing.
ABISAL COMMERCIAL DEFICIT
In the upper part of concerns: the important commercial imbalance that turns against Europe (unlike the relationship with the United States, where the EU has excess goods).
The commercial deficit with Beijing reached the abyssal level of $ 357 billion (304 billion euros) last year, which has great risks for the European industry.
“In the first five months of the year, German exports to China collapsed, while imports from the Popular Republic have increased disproportionately,” said a recent note from the German Economic Institute (IW).
But discussions are going wrong. In response to a European call for the “rebalancing” of economic exchanges, Beijing had already called Brussels to rebalance his “mental state” against China.
“” The more serious and complex the international situation, the more China and the EU must intensify communication, strengthen mutual trust and deepen cooperation, “Xi Jinping said in Ursula von der Leyen.
Conflict in Ukraine and Rare Earth
One of the objectives will be to try to obtain the lifting or ability to retaliate measures taken by China after the increase in European customs tasks in electric cars. Beijing has remarkably aimed at cognac, milk and pork.
Ursula von der Leyen has also assured that Brussels would ask Beijing to open his market to European companies and soften their restrictions on the export of rare earth, strategic for modern technologies.
The war in Ukraine must also be discussed. Europeans are considering the distrust of the economic and political relaunch of China-Russia since the invasion of 2022. The EU considers that it constitutes implicit support in Moscow.
Last week, the EU adopted new sanctions against Russia, falsely two Chinese banks. This measure led the Chinese Minister of Commerce to protest with his European counterpart.
Ukraine “is a central question for Europe,” said the senior European official, which accuses Chinese companies of providing the Russian economy with double -use goods, which is to say, civil products that can be used for military purposes.
Source: BFM TV
