EU unveils plan to de-risk ties with China, but faces fight to get members on board
- Outbound investment screening and broader export controls proposed in plan that does not directly refer to China but created with Beijing in mind
- Proposal comes days after Brussels urged member states to kick Chinese companies out of their 5G networks
Brussels unveiled a plan to inject some steel into economic ties with Beijing on Tuesday, but faced a fight to convince European Union member countries that controls on investments in and exports to China are a good idea.
The bloc’s first economic security strategy is intended to restrict autocratic governments’ access to European technologies that are seen as key to economic security, such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
Jolted into action by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, which revealed its reliance on Russian energy and a painful partial decoupling on that front, the EU has scrambled to investigate its dependencies on China, spooked by its close ties to Moscow.
“With geopolitical tensions rising and global economic integration deeper than ever before, certain economic flows and activities can present a risk to our security,” the strategy read.
While it does not name China directly, decisions relating to economic security will be taken with a geopolitical filter, with Beijing sure to be key to that thinking.
“The obvious candidates when we are using this sort of geopolitical filter when being country agnostic, what comes out is obviously China and Russia,” said EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager.