EU foreign policy chief flags review of China strategy ‘in months’
- Josep Borrell says a report analysing the relationship will be presented to the European Council at the end of the summer
- The EU has already named China as a systemic rival and a landmark investment deal is on hold as tensions continue to rise
Josep Borrell, the 27-member bloc’s foreign policy chief, told the El País newspaper the European Commission would present a report to the European Council at the end of the summer that analysed the relationship with China “to see if it is necessary to review the current policy”.
“The European Union will always be closer to Washington than to Beijing. We will always be closer to a country that has the same political system as ours, a market economy, a multiparty democracy with concurrence in elections, than a single-party country,” he said, according to the article published on Thursday.
“This is not to say that we have to systemically align ourselves with Washington’s positions on Beijing because we have our own specific interests.”
Last week, the EU joined the US and other countries to denounce “malicious cyberattacks” on Microsoft servers by hackers based in China, although the bloc did not explicitly pin the blame on Beijing.
Diplomats say there have been efforts by China to bring the relationship with EU members back on track, including a series of meetings in China with foreign ministers from Finland, Malta, Hungary and Poland. Borrell himself met with China’s foreign minister Wang Yi in Uzbekistan earlier in July, and President Xi Jinping held virtual talks with Germany and France.