{"id":34065,"date":"2026-05-07T06:40:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T06:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/34065\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T06:40:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T06:40:24","slug":"china-eu-investment-deal-should-stay-in-deep-freezer-warns-outgoing-trade-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/34065\/","title":{"rendered":"China-EU investment deal should stay in \u2018deep freezer\u2019, warns outgoing trade chief"},"content":{"rendered":"

The EU\u2019s outgoing top trade official Sabine Weyand<\/a> used her departing appearance at the European Parliament to pour cold water on the prospect of an investment deal with China, hinting instead that new weapons for dealing with Chinese \u201cmacroeconomic imbalances\u201d could be on the way.Weyand, who is leaving her role as the EU\u2019s director general for trade after a seven-year tenure, said the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment \u2013 a pact signed in the last days of 2020 but frozen soon after<\/a> in a row over human rights \u2013 \u201cwas an agreement from another time and for another China\u201d.<\/p>\n

The German official, who leaves her post at the end of the month, quoted the EU\u2019s former competition chief Margrethe Vestager, saying, \u201cIf something has been in the deep freezer for a long time, you shouldn\u2019t take it out and serve it again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The remarks come as Beijing floats the prospect of reviving the deal in engagements with EU leaders. It has also proposed embarking on talks around a free-trade agreement, a suggestion that was embraced by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last month.<\/p>\n

Others, including Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, have said China\u2019s close ties with Russia would be a \u201cdisqualifying factor\u201d on a potential deal.<\/p>\n

Weyand instead made a rare public confirmation that the commission is considering new trade tools to deal with the imbalances stemming from \u201cthe impact China\u2019s economic model has on the rest of the world\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The EU\u2019s outgoing top trade official Sabine Weyand used her departing appearance at the European Parliament to pour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[276,1485,81,9943,39,4,257,258,40,22721,22722,354,13140,16,8357,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-34065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-beijing","9":"tag-belgium","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-chinese","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-european-council","15":"tag-european-parliament","16":"tag-european-union","17":"tag-european-university-institute","18":"tag-florence","19":"tag-margrethe-vestager","20":"tag-maxime-prevot","21":"tag-russia","22":"tag-sabine-weyand","23":"tag-united-states"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}