Europe should use “all the tools” it can leverage to “defend its interests” and tackle aggressive foreign trade practices that threaten its industry, France’s EU Affairs Minister Benjamin Haddad has told Euronews.
His comments come as the EU mulls a clampdown on a glut of Chinese imports.
“A commitment to international trade law — it’s important. But you have to be strong and to be respected,” Haddad said on Euronews’ interview programme, 12 Minutes With.
“You have to be able to defend your interest and use all the tools that you can leverage, especially to impose the very basic principles of fairness and reciprocity.”
Asked if Europe had been too slow in its response to the eroding of international trade rules, Haddad said, “Yes, I think so, because I think that we (Europeans) are still sometimes the last evangelists of a religion that no one is practising anymore.
