EU local weather VP seeks ‘truthful competitors’ with China on inexperienced vitality
By Oliver HOTHAM
Beijing (AFP) July 14, 2025
The European Union is in search of “truthful competitors” with China and never a race to the underside in wages and environmental requirements, the bloc’s vp for the clear transition advised AFP in Beijing on Monday.
Deep frictions exist over financial relations between the 27-nation bloc and China.
Brussels is anxious {that a} manufacturing glut propelled by huge state subsidies might add to a yawning commerce deficit and lead to a flood of low cost Chinese language items undercutting European companies.
Talking throughout a go to to Beijing forward of a significant EU-China summit within the metropolis this month, Teresa Ribera dismissed China’s claims that the bloc was partaking in “protectionism”.
“We Europeans do not need to go down a race in direction of low incomes, decrease labour rights or decrease environmental requirements,” stated Ribera, who additionally serves because the bloc’s competitors chief.
“It’s apparent that we couldn’t be in a very good place if there could possibly be an… over-flooding in our markets that might undermine us with costs that don’t replicate the actual value,” she stated.
The EU imposed further import taxes of as much as 35 p.c on Chinese language electrical automobile imports in October and has investigated Chinese language-owned photo voltaic panel producers.
Requested whether or not EU strikes towards Chinese language inexperienced vitality companies might hurt the worldwide transition to renewables, Ribera stated she accepted that “it’s truthful to say that, sure, we might profit within the very quick time period” from cheaper imports.
Nonetheless, she additionally warned “it might kill the chance” of long-term funding within the bloc’s future.
– ‘Lack of ambition’ –
Ribera additionally met with China’s Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang on Monday for a roundtable dialogue.
She warned in opening remarks that “the attainable lack of ambition by main emitters is a priority to the worldwide group and to our residents” and referred to as for excellent motion.
Ding, in flip, hailed China’s “participation in world environmental governance”.
And at a later information convention, Ribera praised the “deep and optimistic dialog” with Chinese language officers.
However, she added, there was “nice room for enchancment”.
“To be able to enhance, we have to determine what are the factors of issues coming from either side,” she stated.
An answer to commerce tensions sparked by Brussels’s issues of Chinese language industrial overcapacity “will come”, she added — however “not immediately”.
– International disruption –
Ribera’s go to comes as China seeks to enhance relations with the EU as a counterweight to superpower rival the US, whose President Donald Trump has disrupted the worldwide order and pulled Washington out of worldwide local weather accords.
“I do not suppose that now we have witnessed many events up to now the place an enormous financial system, an enormous nation, decides to isolate in such a related method,” Ribera advised AFP.
“It’s a pity… The Chinese language might imagine that the US has given them a terrific alternative to be way more related within the worldwide enviornment.”
The go to additionally comes because the bloc and the US wrangle over a commerce deal. Trump threw months of negotiations into disarray on Saturday by threatening sweeping tariffs on the bloc if no settlement was reached by August 1.
Ribera vowed on Monday that the EU would “defend the pursuits of our firms, our society, our enterprise”.
Requested if a deal was in sight, she stated: “Who is aware of? We’ll do our greatest.”
Nonetheless, she insisted that EU digital competitors guidelines — steadily condemned by Trump as “non-tariff boundaries” to commerce — weren’t on the desk.
“It is a query of sovereignty,” Ribera stated.
“We aren’t going to compromise on the way in which we… defend our residents and our society, our values and our market.”
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