EU Commissioners met on Friday, May 29, to debate how to shield European industries from surging Chinese imports. They recognised that “the current state of the trade and investment relationship is not sustainable” and agreed on the need for a de-risking strategy rather than decoupling.
Earlier last week, the Commission floated measures that could force firms to diversify their supply chains and restrict Beijing’s access to EU markets for chemicals, metals, and clean energy.
Concrete proposals are expected in the third quarter of the year, following the EU leaders’ June summit. This meeting, though, marks a pivotal shift because Europe treated its growing dependence on China as a simple trade concern. Now, it recognises this dependence as a competitiveness and security issue.
Europe’s over-dependency problem
Europe realises it chose efficiency over resilience, while China slowly built control over critical industrial bottlenecks.
