{"id":1015964,"date":"2026-06-09T19:27:35","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T19:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1015964\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T19:27:35","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T19:27:35","slug":"inconclusive-will-eu-leaders-miss-the-chance-to-get-tough-on-china-euobserver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1015964\/","title":{"rendered":"Inconclusive \u2013 will EU leaders miss the chance to get tough on China? \u2013 EUobserver"},"content":{"rendered":"

Those hoping that EU leaders\u00a0might strike a more combative position against China\u00a0at next week\u2019s summit in Brussels are going to be disappointed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

June had been billed, by some EU official points, as a turning point\u00a0in relations, with two major summits \u2013 G7 and European Council \u2013 and a series of meetings between EU and Chinese top trade officials. <\/p>\n

The European Commission wants member states to support an \u2018overcapacity instrument\u2019 that would prevent China from\u00a0deliberately over-producing steel and a raft of other products to depress prices and bankrupt European rivals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s yawning trade deficit with China poses a long-term, systemic threat to the bloc\u2019s economy that far outweighs the\u00a0dangers from US president Donald Trump\u2019s tariff threats.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Tuesday (9\u00a0June),\u00a0Beijing\u2019s commerce vice-minister, Ling Ji, was\u00a0due\u00a0to meet with new EU trade director Ditte Juul Jorgensen in Brussels.<\/p>\n

Juul Jorgensen has replaced Sabine Weyand<\/a>, who has been dispatched to the Siberia of EU officialdom \u2013 a post at the European University in Florence \u2013 after clashing with the commission over the legality of its trade deal with Trump.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet\u00a0the draft EU Council conclusions\u00a0which are circulating among reporters \u2013\u00a0a version of which will be issued after the summit\u00a0\u2013\u00a0do not make a single mention of China.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead, they report that EU leaders held\u00a0\u201ca strategic\u00a0debate on\u00a0the issue of global macroeconomic\u00a0imbalances.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leaders also called for \u201cdecisive progress\u2026\u00a0on\u00a0fostering Europe\u2019s industrial renewal and innovation and reducing dependencies,\u00a0and on\u00a0investment.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

That suggests that Beijing\u2019s lobbying and continued refusal to engage with the EU\u2019s critique of its industrial over-supply has paid off. The debate will be\u00a0kicked\u00a0down\u00a0to\u00a0an\u00a0EU summit in October.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clues lie in a paper signed\u00a0by Spain, Italy, the Netherlands,\u00a0France\u00a0and Lithuania\u00a0in late May, which\u00a0stated\u00a0that the EU needed to take a tougher stance\u00a0to \u201csystemic and structural industrial overcapacity\u201d \u2013 phrases often taken as shorthand for Beijing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Germany, whose own economy is increasingly reliant on Chinese inputs but\u00a0whose trade deficit with China<\/a> is set to clear \u20ac100bn this year, was not among the signatories. <\/p>\n

For its part, Spain, which has received billions of euros of Chinese investment in digital and energy infrastructure projects, later withdrew its signature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That points to Beijing\u2019s astute investment across\u00a0a number of\u00a0EU economies which have created precisely the \u201cdependencies\u201d that\u00a0EU leaders want to reduce.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0not just within the EU. Commission officials are increasingly worried about Morocco, which\u00a0has been the recipient of more than $6bn (\u20ac5.2bn) of Chinese investment in electric vehicle production. The result is that Morocco overtook South Africa last year as Africa\u2019s biggest carmaker.\u00a0<\/p>\n

EU trade commissioner Maro\u0161 \u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d, for his part, has warned that Morocco\u2019s contribution to Chinese industrial over supply is a \u201cbig, big issue\u201d for the bloc\u2019s economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He added that the EU needed a\u00a0specific instrument\u00a0to force companies to diversify their suppliers and tackle over-reliance on China.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are signs that German attitudes are changing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEither we fight back, or China will cripple parts of our industry\u201d, Manfred Weber, the German leader of the\u00a0centre-right \u2018EPP\u2019 group in the European Parliament, told the German press last weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Weber, whose Christian Social Union is allied to the largest party in the Berlin government, added that the EU needed to implement tough\u00a0trade policy instruments \u201cdecisively and without hesitation\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that is unlikely to be next week.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Those hoping that EU leaders\u00a0might strike a more combative position against China\u00a0at next week\u2019s summit in Brussels are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":937415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[217083,2000,299,5187,219220,245341,219218,245339,219219,245340],"class_list":["post-1015964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-typedefinedterm","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-identifier4338","tag-identifier4599","tag-namechina","tag-nameeuobserver-voice","tag-termcodechina","tag-termcodeeuobserver-voice"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116721801404005981","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/937415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}