Still, Brussels is leaving the door open to talks — hence the ministerial visit.
Chinese and European officials discussed setting up a trade and investment consultation mechanism at a lower-level meeting earlier in the month. Two Commission officials, granted anonymity to speak freely, indicated that the EU’s executive is keen on the idea.
What shape the mechanism might take, and how binding it would be, has yet to be decided. A previous “EU-China High Level Economic and Trade Dialogue,” launched in 2008, achieved no lasting breakthroughs.
Any workable solution would require sweeping changes to the EU-China trade relationship that go beyond dialogue. The thinking in the Berlaymont is that China needs to understand that the status quo is unsustainable and that it faces a choice between a negotiated agreement and a potentially damaging confrontation.
Šefčovič is already preparing new trade defense tools, such as a “diversification instrument” that would require European companies to have at least three suppliers of critical inputs to ease reliance on China. New sectoral import quotas, which would limit foreign competition in industries like chemicals or machine tools, are also in the works.
According to a second EU diplomat, when von der Leyen presented her strategy to EU leaders in Brussels this month, she didn’t rule out activating the Anti-Coercion Instrument, the EU’s trade “bazooka” that allows the bloc to restrict access to its market in response to economic coercion.
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