EU lawmakers vow to kill China investment deal over Beijing’s sanctions
- Reject the agreement ‘to show once and for all that the EU is not just a supermarket but rather has principles’, says a French member of the European Parliament
- Parliamentarians in Brussels debate the sanctions for the first time since they were put in place last month
Dozens of Brussels lawmakers have criticised China’s efforts to “gag” European critics through sanctions and vowed to block the EU-China investment deal while the measures remain in place.
At a debate in the European Parliament on Wednesday, more than 30 members took the floor to denounce the sanctions imposed by Beijing last month, moves that targeted a host of elected officials, ambassadors, academics and think tanks.
They warned China that the investment deal was “on ice”, and also took aim at European Commission officials who they claimed had prioritised commercial ties with the world’s second largest economy at the expense of human rights.
“If we want to show once and for all that the EU is not just a supermarket but rather has principles … we have to come up with some tangible action, and that means we need to reject the investment agreement,” Emmanuel Maurel, a left-wing French MEP, said in a statement that seemed aimed as much at EU officials as Chinese ones.
At the beginning of the debate, the EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, said he stood in “full solidarity” with sanctioned MEPs, but reiterated the need to engage with China on multiple fronts.