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The European Union needs to “do more and faster” to project its influence against an increasingly dominant China, former European Commission President José Manuel Barroso has told Euronews.
“Europe should not be a kind of geopolitical teenager. We have to become adults responsible for our own future,” Barroso, who helmed the EU executive between 2004 and 2014, said in an interview ahead of the EU-China summit taking place on Thursday in Beijing.
“Instead of criticising others, what we have to do is our own homework,” he went on, adding that “it’s not because of China or the US” that the EU doesn’t yet have a fully-integrated single market for services or capital, or a joint European defence.
“I insist, this should be a wake-up call for Europe to do its own homework, instead of putting blame on others.”
Thursday’s EU-China summit had promised to be an opportunity to reinvigorate EU-China ties: it falls on the fiftieth anniversary of bilateral relations between Brussels and Beijing and comes as Trump’s unpredictable trade policies throw world trading relations into disarray.
But hopes of a reset have been dashed by simmering tensions over a range of issues, chief among them China’s state-subsidised overproduction, which risks inflating an already-devastating EU trade deficit of €305.8 billion per year with China.
Trade disputes have also escalated after the EU imposed tariffs on China-made electric vehicles (EVs) last year, citing Beijing’s unfair use of subsidies that push EU competitors out of the market. It triggered a tit-for-tat trade conflict, with Beijing launching anti-subsidy probes into EU-made brandy, pork and dairy products.
Asked whether there was still hope of the summit yielding a breakthrough, Barroso was clear: “Frankly, I don’t see that happening. I see a lot of tension.”
“I don’t expect this summit to be the forward-looking, commemorative moment that in principle we would like to see.”
During the decade Barroso was head of the EU executive, China consolidated its position as the world’s second-largest economy. His Commission refrained from granting China so-called “market economy status” in a bid to shield the 27-country bloc from dumping.
Talks for an investment deal known as the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) were also launched under Barroso, but the ratification of the deal later stalled in the European Parliament.
Asked whether he felt more could have been done then to foresee how China could balloon its trade surplus with global partners and develop a near-monopoly on critical supply chains, Barroso defended his Commission: “I don’t think it’s very useful to judge the political decisions of a certain moment in the light of what happened afterwards. Because a political leader decides on the basis of the information he has at that moment.”
“The question is, were those the right decisions according to the information available at that moment? And yes, I believe they were.”
Also stalling any prospects of a detente between both sides is China’s position on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Brussels accuses Beijing of being a “key enabler” of the war through its “no-limits” trade and economic partnership with Moscow.
The EU executive estimates that China supplies 80% of the dual-used goods that end up in Russian weapons.
“Traditionally, China has been always saying they are for multilateral order, that they are for the respect of international law,” Barroso explained.
“But now, in a case that is the most evident case of the last decades, of a clear violation of international law (..) Russia, invading its neighbour Ukraine, taking parts of its territory, China is not able to say just a single word of criticism to Russia.”
“This is, of course, very difficult for the Europeans to accept.”
Watch the full interview live on Europe Today at 8.00 CET on July 24.
