EU-China summit was a ‘dialogue of the deaf’, says top Brussels diplomat
- Josep Borrell tells the European Parliament that Chinese leaders ‘didn’t want to talk about Ukraine’ during Friday’s online summit
- ‘China cannot pretend to be a great power but close its eyes or cover its ears when it comes to a conflict that obviously makes it uncomfortable’
The European Union’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell has dismissed last week’s high-profile summit with China as a “dialogue of the deaf”, saying that Chinese leaders “did not want to talk about Ukraine”.
In a stronger than usual rebuke of Beijing by Brussels’ top diplomat, Borrell told the European Parliament on Tuesday evening that Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and President Xi Jinping wanted to “instead focus on the positive things”.
“China wanted to set aside our differences on Ukraine, they didn’t want to talk about Ukraine. They didn’t want to talk about human rights and other stuff and instead focus on positive things,” Borrell said during a fiery debate on China in Strasbourg, France.
“This was not exactly a dialogue, maybe a dialogue of the deaf … we could not talk about Ukraine a lot, and we did not agree on anything else,” he continued.
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China says ‘no limits’ in cooperation with Russia
The first bilateral summit in almost two years took place via video link on Friday, with Borrell joined by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel.