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Flags of the European Union and China are seen in this multiple-exposure illustration.
Viewpoint: Amid deepening divisions, EU and Chinese leaders set to meet this week
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel will visit Beijing on Dec. 7 for in-person meetings with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang. The two sides want to show a commitment to dialog at a time when their relations are coming under mounting strain, as underscored by the recent opening of an EU probe into unfair Chinese competition in the electric vehicle sector.
Similar to last month’s meeting between Xi and US President Joe Biden, this week’s EU-China summit is not expected to produce any major breakthroughs. To find out more, we spoke with Emre Peker, a director for Eurasia Group’s Europe practice, and Anna Ashton, a director for the China practice.
Why is this meeting happening now?
Emre Peker: The last time Xi and the EU’s top two officials met in person was in 2019 in Beijing, before the pandemic struck. They have met virtually a couple of times since. This week’s in-person gathering is meant to showcase Brussels and Beijing’s willingness to maintain a healthy dialog despite their growing differences.
Anna Ashton: Both sides have sought increased engagement since Beijing began lifting its strict COVID policies toward the end of 2022. The EU-China trade and investment relationship is crucial for both. Other issues of common concern include climate change, global health, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
What does the EU want to achieve at the summit?
Peker: Among other issues, the EU wants to address growing imbalances in its economic relations with China as well as the war in Ukraine. A key priority is to highlight the EU’s willingness to take measures to protect itself against Chinese industrial subsidies and overcapacity, which are contributing to a record-high trade deficit with China. Brussels will also seek greater Chinese collaboration on enforcing sanctions against Russia by presenting a list of Chinese companies that will be targeted for penalties unless Beijing helps halt the trans-shipment of dual-use goods. Lastly, the EU will seek to convince Beijing that Europe’s stance on China is distinct from that of the US, particularly on economic matters, to obtain more cooperation and avert escalating tensions.
What does China want?
Ashton: Protecting trade and investment ties with the EU has grown more important for Beijing given the economic headwinds it faces at home. Moreover, Chinese authorities worry about the EU’s drift toward China policies resembling those of the US and want to hammer out a distinct and more cooperative path for China-EU relations. But progress is likely to be limited given their differences on a range of issues. These include the flood of Chinese EVs entering the EU; EU steps to bolster export controls on dual-use goods — particularly tech products — and consider outbound investment screening; the obstacles faced by European companies to doing business in China; and European accusations of Chinese circumvention of sanctions on Russia.
What are the best-case outcomes we can expect?
Peker: On the economic front, a best-case outcome would be an agreement from Beijing to immediately remove trade barriers for certain EU products (such as medical devices and infant formula) and take steps that would facilitate greater market access and investment opportunities for European companies generally. On the diplomatic front, China would proactively collaborate in enforcing sanctions on Russia and commit to more diplomatic engagement on Ukraine’s 10-point peace plan.
Ashton: China’s ties with the EU are strained, but not as fraught as those with the US, so theoretically there is potential for deliverables that equal or surpass those of the Biden-Xi summit, where the two sides agreed to cooperate on bilateral irritants such as fentanyl precursors and military-to-military dialogue. China could offer narrow concessions on market access, but given the limited receptiveness shown to EU trade and investment concerns, does not appear likely to offer broad concessions. Though China and the EU continue to harbor sharply different views about the causes of the war in Ukraine and essential terms for its resolution, Beijing could signal a willingness to participate in future rounds of talks.
How do you expect EU-China relations to evolve over the medium term?
Peker: Given the expectation that the summit will not deliver any major breakthroughs, the EU will likely continue to harden its stance against China, raising the risk of Chinese commercial retaliation. The EU will not likely be able to convince Beijing of its autonomy from the US on China policies, hurting EU ambitions to establish more constructive engagement with China. Therefore, the EU is likely to seek open communication channels and stable commercial ties in the medium term, while trying to reduce dependencies on China in the long run.
Ashton: Beijing is unlikely to shift the EU away from its assessment that China has become an economic competitor. Therefore, China will continue its efforts to drive a wedge between the EU’s and the US’s approaches to relations with China, but its success in this regard will largely be determined by the politics of EU member states and the policies of the next administration in Washington.
Edited by Jonathan House, senior editor at Eurasia Group.
A precarious metal boat carrying 40-50 migrants across the Mediterranean from Africa.
Europe plays the blame game over asylum-seekers
“There had been landings but never a tragedy like this,” the mayor of Cutro, a southern Italian town, said after a boat carrying an estimated 200 migrants splintered into pieces on Sunday after hitting rocky terrain.
At least 63 people, including children and at least one newborn, were found dead, while 80 migrants, all adults, survived. Dozens remain missing. Most of the migrants came from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, having crossed the tumultuous sea from Turkey.
This week’s tragedy comes amid a steep increase since 2022 in the number of asylum-seekers from North Africa and South Asia attempting to cross the Mediterranean in hopes of reaching Europe. Indeed, the Italian coast has emerged as the first point of entry for many would-be migrants fleeing economic hardship, oppression, and political implosion.
What’s causing the uptick, and how are Italy and the European Union responding?
A post-COVID surge. The pandemic years saw a lull in migrants from North Africa crossing the Mediterranean, largely due to border closures. But that all changed in 2022 when a significant number of migrants from Afghanistan, Tunisia, Libya, Eritrea, Iraq, Egypt, and elsewhere resumed attempts to make the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe. Though the influx has not reached crisis levels seen in 2015-2016, when 1.3 million people sought refuge in Europe, roughly 100,000 people crossed the Mediterranean into Italy alone last year. Migration levels have also steadily risen due to an influx of refugees from the eastern flank of Ukraine, as well as the Western Balkan route, which accounted for 45% of all illegal entry attempts into the EU last year.
There has been a “build-up of migration pressure because of people who needed to leave during the pandemic but did not have the access,” says Eric Reidy, a reporter for The New Humanitarian focused on migration. This dynamic is also interacting with specific factors, Reidy notes, including the “Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan and the deteriorating situation for Syrian refugees in Turkey.”
Shipwrecked in Italy. Many refugees leaving Turkey or northeast Libya, two of the main points of embarkation, are opting to take a longer and more perilous journey to Italy to avoid disembarking in Greece, where authorities have been known to push back boats. Meanwhile, prison-like conditions at Greek refugee camps have been a boon for people smugglers promising to help would-be migrants reach the Italian coast.
But the Italian government isn’t keen to absorb the influx. Since coming to power last fall, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of the far-right Brothers of Italy Party has sought to position herself as an anti-immigrant firebrand. While Meloni, a nationalist, has surprisingly avoided many of the anticipated confrontations with the European Union, her government has introduced sweeping anti-immigrant legislation and antagonized fellow member states into sharing the load.
“Italy wants more redistribution where they [migrants] can submit their asylum request elsewhere – but this is a non-starter in Europe,” says Luca Barana, a research fellow at Italy's Institute for International Affairs in Rome, pointing to bloc-wide rules requiring member states to process refugees who arrive first in their territorial waters. Rome, however, says the status quo is unsustainable.
Meloni takes on NGOs. In a move broadly condemned by rights groups, the Meloni government has focused on making it harder for humanitarian vessels to rescue migrants at sea by assigning boats to disembarkation ports in northern Italy. Essentially, this means that after conducting a rescue operation, vessels must return to their designated port – even ignoring subsequent distress calls – limiting their time on the sea. Those who ignore the order could have their vessels confiscated by Italian authorities.
Indeed, the anti-NGO push was largely championed by deputy PM and longtime anti-immigrant advocate Matteo Salvini, who has long argued that the presence of charity rescue vessels in the Mediterranean incentivizes migrants to risk the journey.
Unsurprisingly, this policy is causing deep rifts within the EU. Back in November, France and Italy were at loggerheads after Rome refused to accept the Ocean Viking, a ship carrying 230 migrants, claiming – in what France said was an act of bad faith – that Paris had agreed to take in the vessel (it had not). After three weeks of bobbing around on the waters, France ultimately accepted the NGO vessel but suspended an earlier goodwill gesture to take in 3,500 refugees from Italy.
What’s Europe doing about it? In recent years, both Italy and the EU have been trying to direct resources to countries of origin to try and stop the boats. Just last month, Italy delivered another ship to the Libyan coast guard, while Meloni also recently visited Libya to strengthen cooperation arrangements.
However, refugee advocates have long said that Europe’s ability to absorb refugees is simply a matter of political will. Many now point to the absorption of Ukrainian refugees over the past year as a case in point. “Around 4.8 million Ukrainians registered for protection in the EU in the past year,” Reidy says, while comparatively, the number of people crossing the Mediterranean to Europe is in the 120,000-150,000 range. For Reidy, this reinforces the “division of refugees into deserving and undeserving refugees” that pervades Europe.
As part of this effort to augment North African coast guards, intercepted migrants are often put in indefinite detention by Libyan authorities. They are “detained in horrendous conditions where forced labor, torture, extortion, and sexual abuse” are rife, Reidy says. Their only way out is to pay a hefty fine or, for women, to sexually exploit themselves. Otherwise, they risk languishing there indefinitely.
What now? It’s easy to blame the bureaucracy in Brussels for policy stagnation, but that’s not what’s really going on here. Rather, the problem is that 27 member states with competing domestic priorities simply can’t agree on a possible solution. Italy, playing for a domestic audience that backs its tough-on-migration play, remains committed to employing cynical tactics to get the EU to play ball. But as crises mount around the world, would-be-migrants still calculate that risking their lives at sea is safer than staying put.EU-China "reset" in limbo
On Friday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang in their first virtual summit since June 2020. Originally, they’d planned to try and ease tensions after a rough two years for EU-China ties. But then Russia invaded Ukraine, and that has scrambled the EU’s priorities. We asked Eurasia Group analyst Emre Peker to explain.
What does the EU want out of the meeting?
The EU's top priority now is to persuade China to throw its weight behind the international effort to stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which the EU views as an existential threat. China's refusal to condemn Russia's actions has deeply frustrated EU officials. Some in Brussels hope that the bloc’s strong commercial links and less antagonistic relationship with China than that of the US with the Asian giant will help EU leaders nudge Xi Jinping to exert pressure on his pal Vladimir Putin to end the war.
Are there other things to discuss?
Prior to the Ukraine war, the leaders would have focused on the trade restrictions China slapped on EU member state Lithuania in retaliation for allowing Taiwan to open a de-facto embassy in Vilnius; cooperation on climate change; and improving commercial ties while paving the way toward unblocking a massive EU-China investment pact that's been stalled for a year over a spate of EU sanctions and Chinese countersanctions prompted by China’s treatment of the Uyghurs. These issues may fade into the background now.
So, how is the war in Ukraine likely to affect EU-China relations?
The consensus in Brussels and EU capitals is that China is not really interested in applying pressure on Russia. As long as that is the case, EU-China relations will suffer. More broadly, Russia’s actions and the international sanctions they have provoked have highlighted for the EU the dangers of excessive reliance on trading partners such as Russia, while exacerbating pandemic-driven concerns over the bloc’s reliance on many types of Chinese imports. EU officials had already been growing increasingly alarmed over aggressive Chinese behavior such as the trade restrictions placed on Lithuania. Russia’s actions and China’s commitment to its “no limits” partnership with Moscow will crystalize for the EU the need to prepare for all eventualities.
What will the EU do?
The bloc will be more receptive to the increasingly harder line toward Beijing advocated by Washington, as it has gone from trade spats with China during the administration of Donald Trump to a broader and more intense global rivalry under President Joe Biden. Yet the Europeans will want to tread cautiously. With high energy prices and rising inflation caused by the war, the last thing they want to do is risk their lucrative investments in China, not to mention pick a fight with the world's second-largest economy. An important plank of their efforts to push back against China is likely to be ramping up efforts to produce locally some strategically important goods currently purchased from China. The European Commission outlined last year a strategy to reduce imports across six categories—raw materials, batteries, active pharmaceutical ingredients, hydrogen, semiconductors, and cloud and edge technologies.
Will these developments push the EU closer to the US?
The Europeans are very upset at China over Ukraine and more aligned with the US over security concerns than they've been since 9/11. Still, Brussels is not (yet) willing to fully decouple from Beijing, as the Biden administration would like it to do.
One important upcoming event to watch is a meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council in France in May, which will allow us to gauge the temperature of transatlantic efforts to push back against China. The Europeans think that since the TTC has been effective at implementing joint export controls against Russia, perhaps it could be used in a similar way against China. The US and the EU also want to promote Western standards on artificial intelligence, which China won't like.
Most EU-US talks in the near future will have somewhat of an anti-China vibe. Both sides want to cooperate more on screening Chinese investments and making their supply chains more resilient to disruptions from China. Brussels and Washington are clearly game to use policy on trade, climate, and other issues to fight China's state-led capitalism — and the economic dislocations it causes.
So, there’s not much chance of an EU-China reset?
Not in the near term. The EU-China investment pact is unlikely to be ratified before the second half of next year. Despite the challenges to finalizing the agreement, the EU will not kill it outright because of the opportunities unlocking a greater portion of the Chinese market would offer European companies. Meanwhile, China remains unwilling to lift countersanctions on several members of the European Parliament over the Uyghur issue, which is a pre-condition for EU ratification. And, of course, China's bullying of Lithuania and its position on Ukraine are major hurdles to overcome.
Boris Johnson, Miles Davis, and Brexit
"Time isn't the main thing. It's the only thing." The words of jazz genius Miles Davis are surely resonating with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who flew to Brussels on Wednesday to iron out a post-Brexit trade agreement before the UK formally leaves the European Union — with or without a deal — on January 1.
While it was the first face-to-face meeting between Johnson and European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, since January, it's been four years since UK citizens voted in a referendum to leave the EU. Why has this been so hard to pull off?
As we enter the Brexit homestretch, here's a look at some key sticking points.
What are the outstanding issues?
🐟 Fish . London and Brussels simply can't agree on rules governing fishing rights, which has long been an emotive political issue for many Britons who say that they got a subpar deal when London joined the European Economic Community in the 1970s. They complain that non-British boats now draw in more than 60 percent of the value of fish drawn from English waters.
The UK says that its fishing waters should be "first and foremost for British boats," but the EU wants to retain rules that allow its vessels to have full access, threatening that it will block London's "special access" to its single market. As EU boats catch fish worth around £600 million in UK waters every year, Brussels is under huge pressure from fishing communities in dozens of member states not to back down.
Level playing field. EU-wide rules and regulations — the "level playing field" — seek to ensure that no country gains a competitive edge over another. But in exchange for privileged access to the EU marketplace, Europe is now demanding that Britain not adopt new labor, environmental, taxation and other rules that might undermine the competitiveness of European companies. Brexiteers, on the other hand, are furious, arguing that adhering to EU policy and regulations negates the entire Brexit mission altogether.
There was, however, a breakthrough in recent days when the UK backed down on its plan to breach the withdrawal treaty over how it would oversee trade with Northern Ireland.
What's at stake?
For the UK, the stakes are very high. If no deal is reached by January 1, British businesses that have long benefitted from access to the bloc's customs union will find themselves facing massive bureaucratic hurdles and high costs on goods crossing borders.
This is a big deal considering the UK does more than half of all its trade within the EU, which imports 43 percent of all British goods. If no deal is reached in the next few weeks, analysts warn, Britons could soon see some staples pulled from supermarket shelves, stranded transport vehicles with nowhere to deliver goods, and a floundering manufacturing sector.
For the EU, the stakes are high. Decades of free trade with the UK that have been a boon for EU businesses could come to an abrupt end in a no-deal scenario. It could make the GDP of the EU, which has long enjoyed a healthy trade surplus with the UK, contract by 0.5 percent in the near term if European companies have to pay tariffs and meet quotas.
Importantly, the Europeans are also worried that London will cut social and environmental standards, and become a low-regulation economic competitor like China, which continues to flood the bloc's market.
Johnson's gambit. The British PM has long been playing hardball with Brussels, but times are a'changin: popular discontent over Johnson's botched pandemic response has left him with diminished political capital to make painful concessions. (Johnson currently has a net approval rating of -18 percent.)
Johnson wants to have his cake (scone) and eat it too. He is pushing for a post-Brexit agreement that allows London to retain access to the EU single market, while also setting its own rules and regulations. The EU, meanwhile, desperately wants the UK to compromise. Who will blink first?
Historic EU COVID recovery fund deal; Turkey and Greece Aegean dispute
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on this week's World In (More Than) 60 Seconds:
How will the EU coronavirus recovery fund work and are there winners and losers?
How it's going to work? Hundreds of billions of euros being distributed between, its collective redistribution from wealthy countries to poor countries. And that money has been now unanimous agreement between all 27 members of the European Union. Not 28, the Brits are no longer a part of the table. And it's historic. It's by far the biggest political success that we've seen anywhere around the world in providing real multilateral leadership to help make it easier for those countries that are suffering the most. In the case of Europe, that means the poorer countries that don't have the ability to bail out their devastated economies. Again, you are seeing double digit contractions across Europe economically this year. Now you're seeing hundreds of billions of euros, half of that will be grants, don't need to pay back, half will be loans. That was a big part of the of the debate, of the controversy.
And who's it going to go to? It's going to go to the southern Europeans, like Italy, like Spain. It's going to go to the Eastern Europeans. And part of that, that's where you have some of the problems that some of those East Europeans do not actually support. All of the mandated rule of law, independent judiciary that you're supposed to, to be a part of the EU, the EU has not been able to sanction them. Countries like Hungary and Poland precisely because you need unanimity to do so and it's hard to get unanimity. Some of the wealthier countries are saying, "well, we're not going to give that money unless we can ensure that everybody that gets it actually is aligned politically." Well, that didn't work. So, countries like Poland and Hungary will continue to have their political systems diverge from those of the west and the north. That's bad for Europe long term, but for the short term, Euroscepticism is actually on the decline, not on the rise, because even if you're a Eurosceptic in a country like Italy or Greece or Hungary, if they're saying they're going to give you money to help bail you out, mutualized debt, something that no one thought could have happened before the pandemic, you're reasonably happy with that. I mean, you know, you're not going to give up free money. That's how I like Ayn Rand Institute accepting cash from the US government. You know, I mean, you read "Atlas Shrugged." I mean, I suppose, though, it was horrible, but that doesn't mean you won't take free money from the government. That's just your ideology. Who cares about that?
What is going on with Turkey and Greece in the Aegean Sea?
Well, the Turkish government is now sending a bunch of military vessels, looks like towards this Greek economic exclusion zone, which is where the Greeks are saying they have the right to exploit resources in the Aegean Sea. The Turks are contesting that. It's kind of like the dispute you've seen in the South China Sea, where the international community clearly supports one set of norms in the fishing and mineral rights that are off of countries borders. But the more powerful country militarily in the region, China, is trying to subvert that. That is what we are potentially now seeing with Turkey and the Greeks. With the Turks saying they have the right to exploit and providing licenses for doing so and suddenly a bunch of military ships showing up. Very interesting because Greece and Turkey are both NATO allies. The Americans are supporting the Greeks, as the international community broadly does here, in terms of their definition of what their territoriality actually implies, where it expands to. But that doesn't mean the Turks are going to listen. And the fact there's been a bit of a bromance between President Trump and Turkish President Erdogan complicates this. So, we should watch this very closely. Big win for the Greeks in terms of the EU deal, potentially big problems in terms of the fight with Turkey.
Finally, is Russian influence in UK politics really the "new normal?"
I'm going to say no. I think people continue to exaggerate what the Russians are actually able to accomplish. It is true that they provided lots of disinformation and certainly weren't saying, they weren't open about it, they weren't saying "this is coming from Russia." It wasn't state propaganda. It was pretending to be local actors with the Brexit referendum, with the Scottish independence referendum, and of course, in the United States with the US elections. But the amount of money is relatively limited. And the outcomes, I would argue, are much more divisive because of problems in these countries themselves. The Russians tried to have that same kind of impact on the German elections and it failed. Why did it fail? Because the German people were generally happier with their social contract, generally weren't prepared to listen to crazy extremist conspiracy theories. In the US, in the UK, where lots of people increasingly feel like their own systems are delegitimized and rigged, they're more willing to listen to wackos. And so, they're more susceptible to delegitimization efforts, whether they're domestic or international. So, if you really want to fix this, I mean, yes, the US needs to respond and show that if the Russians hit us on cyber, we're going to hit them on cyber. That tit for tat is completely understandable and appropriate. But you're not going to fix the problem until you actually build your own resilience at home and that's what we need to be doing. Certainly true for the UK.
Kosovo president indicted for war crimes; Americans barred from EU?
Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, provides his perspective from Europe:
What will happen to the president of Kosovo?
Well, if the indictments that have now been published are confirmed, then he actually faces arrest. And we'll have to go to The Hague and then face a lengthy, complicated trial where our protection of witnesses is going to be quite a problem. It's going to take years. And no question, this will bring significant turmoil to the politics of Kosovo.
Will Americans be prevented from entering the European Union?
That's now being discussed by the by the ministers over videoconference with Brussels. But on the criteria that are there at the moment, it looks not unlikely that will be the case. But the debate is still ongoing.