Xi Jinping, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron throw support behind EU-China investment deal, Beijing says
- Each leader expressed hope that the agreement would be approved soon, according to Chinese summary of video call
- Macron and Merkel ‘expressed serious concerns about the human rights situation in China’ and forced labour issues
The leaders of China, France and Germany threw their support behind an EU-China investment agreement on Monday, despite the deal’s failure to gain widespread backing in Europe, according to a Chinese summary of a video call between the three countries’ leaders.
In a call between China’s Xi Jinping and counterparts Angela Merkel of Germany and France’s Emmanuel Macron, each expressed hope that the deal would be approved soon, the Chinese readout said.
The call came at an increasingly tense moment for EU-China ties, with growing concerns about China’s human rights record and coercive economic practices pervading both Brussels’ institutions and member states.
The agreement has been stalled by the European Parliament in response to China’s retaliatory sanctions on some of its members.
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Macron and Merkel, according to a readout from the French government, “expressed their serious concerns about the human rights situation in China and reiterated their demands regarding the fight against forced labour”.