Exclusive | Cold shoulder? China and EU in diplomatic stand-off ahead of Munich showdown

As a flurry of European leaders flock to China, a different diplomatic dynamic has taken shape in Brussels, exposing deep-seated problems in the relationship between the EU and China. Several sources described a deliberate slowing of high-level appointments with Chinese diplomats in the Belgian capital – an effort to reciprocate the lack of access EU diplomats receive in Beijing. In the Chinese capital, the EU ambassador, Jorge Toledo, has been effectively frozen out of meetings with relevant ministries for a prolonged period, according to multiple sources. Toledo, an outspoken critic of both China’s industrial overcapacity and its close ties with Russia, faces the sort of diplomatic isolation meted out, at times, to his predecessor, Nicolas Chapuis. In 2018, during Chapuis’ first official meeting with the Chinese foreign ministry, the envoy was asked why he had bothered coming, sources who were present said. “Let’s just say that arranging meetings [in Brussels] has not been considered top priority,” an official said of their side of the stand-off. While no official ban is in place, a second EU official said engagement had been “more slow and selective”, even if some structured talks such as last week’s EU-China dialogue on water resilience continued. A third source said commission officials had been asked to avoid meetings with Cai Run, China’s ambassador to the EU, as long as Toledo kept being shunted in Beijing. A fourth confirmed this but said that lower-level meetings had proceeded. It is not merely officials feeling spurned: two separate sources said that when a delegation from BusinessEurope – Brussels’ leading lobby group – travelled to Beijing in December last year, they were denied an audience with China’s Ministry of Commerce for the first time in a decade of visiting the Chinese capital. Officially, the group was told that because French President Emmanuel Macron was in town, nobody from the ministry was free to meet. But business figures said they were “shocked” by what was seen as a snub for a group that for some years urged caution on some of Brussels’ more hardline China policies. “China is doubling down on not speaking with European structures,” said one of the sources, describing how national-level business groups were having more luck than multinationals. Yet, upon returning to Brussels, the business group found itself in demand from Chinese diplomats in Belgium who had been starved of official access. At a meeting with Cai, the group was told that the EU must follow the path of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has pursued a reset in ties with China after a tumultuous year in US relations. The ambassador floated reviving a stalled investment pact and even launching talks over a free-trade agreement, people familiar with the meeting said. The diplomatic dynamic is not entirely new. EU officials have long grumbled about China’s “divide-and-conquer” tactics, offering narrow market access to member states in the hope they would help dilute Brussels’ increasingly assertive stances. But the pattern has accelerated in recent weeks, with the European Commission starting the year as it finished the last. A string of high-profile investigations, rulings and proposals against Chinese companies and sectors including Huawei Technologies and wind turbine maker Goldwind as well as TikTok, owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance, came alongside the announcement of a record Chinese trade surplus in 2025, leaving the impression there was little good news for the sides to discuss. For Beijing, dealing with member states can be more fruitful: each has a vote on incoming laws designed to penalise Chinese companies and promote European ones, and their divisions on China policy have been well documented. Visits from the political leaders of EU members Finland and Ireland this year followed those of the French president and Spanish king in late 2025. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer travelled last week, while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is scheduled to arrive before the month’s end, with each visitor to date returning with business deals. In response, Beijing has reopened beef and pork markets for Ireland and Spain and dangled visas or aircraft orders for others, even as its relations with Brussels fray. The Munich Security Conference this week would ordinarily be a venue for a high-level Beijing-Brussels meeting. It was there a year ago that the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, first met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. As Europe reeled from a hectoring address by US Vice-President J.D. Vance, Wang led a diplomatic charge, meeting leaders and top diplomats on the margins of Europe’s premier security forum, pitching Beijing as a stable partner to a Trump-battered continent. From Friday, all eyes are on the Bavarian city once again. There, Wang may meet US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, but a meeting with Kallas had yet to be confirmed as of Wednesday. In previous years, Kallas and her predecessor, Josep Borrell, met Wang on the conference’s sidelines as a matter of course. Last year, EU sources were aware in mid-January that such a meeting would take place. Even if a meeting were to occur, there would be no guarantee of a thaw since the pair have clashed in the past. During preparatory talks in the Belgian capital last July ahead of the EU-China summit, Wang shocked his European interlocutors by telling them that Beijing did not want Russia to lose the war in Ukraine because that would mean the US would turn its full attention to Asia. Insiders described the encounter as tense from the outset, with minor protocol mix-ups and a combative on-camera opening from Kallas in which she pressed Wang over China’s support for Russia. The mood further soured when Wang felt obliged to raise a toast after his host forgot to do so. To supporters of Kallas, the meeting simply reflected the depth of European anger over the Ukraine war. The former Estonian prime minister remains among Kyiv’s strongest backers in Brussels and much of her foreign policy outlook flows from that. For Chinese officials, though, the encounter may have been viewed as evidence that Brussels prefers public lecturing to quiet diplomacy, and it perhaps offered further justification for focusing diplomatic efforts on Europe’s capitals instead. In Munich last year, there were audible gasps as Vance berated Europe for what has now become Washington’s standard critique, centred on “civilisational erasure” and “the enemy within”. This year, Wang again will be there to work the margins, presenting Beijing as a logical partner for an EU in need of predictability. Whether Europe will take up the offer from China’s top diplomat – and whether Brussels is at the table – will be one of the quieter but more revealing tests at Munich this year.

.css-sioo19{color:#c79a00;}Exclusive | Cold shoulder? China and EU in diplomatic stand-off ahead of Munich showdown

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Annual security conference could provide rare venue for high-level EU-China talks as top diplomats Wang Yi and Kaja Kallas attend

Exclusive | Cold shoulder? China and EU in diplomatic stand-off ahead of Munich showdown

Annual security conference could provide rare venue for high-level EU-China talks as top diplomats Wang Yi and Kaja Kallas attend