The European Commission is done playing nice with Beijing. On May 29, EU commissioners held preliminary discussions on a sweeping recalibration of trade defenses against China, signaling that the bloc is ready to move beyond targeted product-level disputes and toward sector-wide protectionism.
EU industry chief Stéphane Séjourné characterized the threat from Chinese competition as “existential.” The plan: expand the use of import quotas, tariffs, and safeguard measures across chemicals, metals, and clean technology, three sectors where Chinese exports have been flooding European markets at prices domestic producers simply cannot match.
A coalition of the willing
Brussels isn’t acting in a vacuum. Five EU member states, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Lithuania, submitted a joint non-paper around May 24 that calls for accelerated sector-wide safeguard investigations, increased tariffs, and the development of entirely new defensive tools to counter what these governments describe as unfair trade practices.
The numbers driving this urgency are hard to ignore. The EU-China goods trade deficit hit approximately €360 billion in 2025, a figure that has only continued to widen into 2026.
