EU slows down de-risking plans for China in face of member state resistance
- Brussels is pressing on with plans to weed out scientific collaborations with Chinese military, but faces resistance on screening outbound investments
- European Commission vows to push forward with its economic security strategy, but says it wants to avoid ‘turf war’ with member states
A senior Brussels official denied, however, that it had been forced to “water down its plans” and insisted the European Commission was determined to push on with its economic security strategy.
Unveiled in Brussels on Wednesday were plans to revise rules on vetting foreign investments and to set guidelines on academic collaboration to protect European researchers from industrial espionage and foreign interference.
“In 2022 investigative journalists found almost 3,000 scientific collaborations of EU universities with Chinese military institutes since the year 2000,” EU competition boss Margrethe Vestager told a press conference.
“This may not have been illegal then. But the question, of course, is: is it desirable? Is this what we want?”
But the most controversial elements of the strategy, first proposed last June, were kicked into 2025 amid opposition from powerful EU capitals.