Monday’s meeting (29 June) between Chinese commerce minister Wang Wentao and EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič in Brussels has been billed by EU officials as a make-or-break event for the future of Europe’s trade with the manufacturing superpower.
China’s oversupply and low domestic consumption was “an imbalance that the world just cannot digest,” outgoing EU trade negotiator Sabine Weyand told MEPs in the run up.
Šefčovič’s office had drafted plans for an ‘overcapacity’ instrument that would allow the EU to impose new tariffs on a raft of Chinese industrial goods and import limits.
His officials have also mooted a ‘diversification’ instrument that would force European companies to diversify supply sources in critical sectors, in a move to reduce industrial dependency on China.
But the momentum on putting those measures into law appears to have been lost.
