The European Union inched forward with its plans to de-risk its relationship with China on Wednesday, but the most controversial elements have been tempered amid resistance from 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.
EU firms are reluctant to speak up on China as Brussels tries to de-risk13 Dec 2023
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.
Instead of proposing a law for screening the investments of private companies into 10 hi-tech sectors in perceived risky markets like China, Brussels will embark on a series of monitoring exercises, aiming to propose a policy by the end of next year. In reality, it could be many years before any proposal becomes law.
“I would not agree that the package is watered down,” EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters at the commission’s headquarters. “All the initiatives we announced in June, we are following through in consultation with member states and stakeholders.”
Brussels has also been pushing to harmonise member states’ export control regimes. This was to reduce the risk that “through certain investments, in certain countries, the technology could leak, know-how is passed on and gets into the hands of military intelligence and is used back against us”, a senior EU official said.
But some member states are unwilling to hand these powers over to the commission. So rather than proposing a law, it has published a white paper “to assess whether current rules can be improved in the face of geopolitical challenges”.
