At the end of December 2020, key EU leaders held a video conference with Xi Jinping; subsequently the EU and China announced that they had reached an agreement in principle on the China-EU Investment Agreement (CEIA).
The EU’s internal assessment warns against expecting too much from the preliminary agreement reached at the end of last month, arguing that the agreement will not achieve full equality and “mutual benefit”. In addition, the British Foreign Secretary criticized, without naming names, the EU leaders for abandoning human rights values and making deals with the Chinese Communist Party. Some EU lawmakers have asked Germany and France, the main promoters of the agreement, to make public whether they are “making concessions” to China.
German newspaper “Handelsblatt” revealed on Monday (18) that the European Commission is weakening its expectations for an investment agreement with China, with expert assessments acknowledging that the agreement will not achieve “mutual benefits” for EU countries on a fully equal footing with China.
In an interview with the station, German-Taiwanese commentator Cheng Shiguang pointed out that the agreement cannot achieve real “mutual benefits”, but only “win-win” under the definition of the Chinese Communist Party, i.e. “the Chinese Communist Party wins twice”. He criticized the Chinese Communist Party for not keeping its promises, and through media exposure, he saw that the EU’s preventive mechanism in this regard is very weak, and that an arbitration body is unable to restrain the Chinese Communist Party.
Cheng Shiguang said: “The Chinese Communist Party’s policy can be modified at any time, the agreement says that in case which party does not keep, there is an arbitration body can adjust to negotiate, I doubt that an arbitration body can bind the behavior of the country? It will not be effective.
Cheng Shiguang criticized that the EC’s warning is more like a politician’s trick. He pessimistically expected that the agreement would eventually be adopted under certain conditions, as Hanns Gunther Hilper, an expert on East Asia at the Berlin-based think tank “Foundation for Science and Politics”, said. He also condemned German Chancellor Angela Merkel for pushing for the agreement to pass rather than uniting with other democracies to deal with the Chinese Communist Party.
Cheng Shiguang said: “The only use of that warning is to write it for us, it’s a shame cloth, it’s an old trick of politicians. I am quite pessimistic, I think it will be passed. Merkel’s current approach is very abandoning her position and rather dwarfing the EU. The EU should cooperate with the US or other countries with the same democratic and free market values to confront the Chinese Communist Party, otherwise it will definitely give the Chinese Communist Party the opportunity to attack them all.
Zhang Lun, a professor at the University of Cergy-Pontoise in France, believes that the agreement will be played out before it is adopted by the EU Parliament and EU member states.
Anyone with political judgment within the EU would have warned of this,” Zhang said. There is no dispute that Europe wants to follow its own independent path, but if Europe loses its basic principles for the sake of interests, Europe will pay a greater price for it. There will still be some games before the final parliamentary adoption and the official entry into force.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said in a media interview on Sunday (17) that Britain should not sign free trade agreements with countries that violate human rights. AFP said he criticized the EU leaders by name for reaching an investment agreement with China.
German Green Party member Reinhard Butikofer, chairman of the EU parliamentary group on China, cited a report by the Wall Street Journal that revealed that Merkel held a separate video conference with Xi and French President Emmanuel Macron at the end of 2020 after Xi and key EU leaders negotiated the China-EU Investment Agreement, and that Butikofer asked for details to be disclosed, questioning the German and French leaders’ role in concessions made in facilitating the deal. Photo shows Xi Jinping meeting with Merkel and Macron during his visit to France in March 2019. (Photo on the official website of the German government)
German Green MEP Reinhard Butikofer, chairman of the European Parliament’s China Group, has repeatedly criticized and questioned the agreement. On Friday (15), he quoted the US Wall Street Journal as reporting that Merkel held a separate video conference with Xi Jinping and French President Macron on Dec. 29, 2020, following Xi’s negotiations with key EU leaders on the China-EU Investment Agreement, and that Bitikov demanded the disclosure of details, questioning the concessions made by German and French leaders in facilitating the agreement.
In addition, voices in Europe have questioned the continued prevalence of forced labor and exploitation in China and the vagueness of China’s commitment to comply with international labor standards. There is also criticism that China’s forced labor of Uighurs in Xinjiang has not been proposed, and the Communist authorities’ total control over Hong Kong raises doubts that China will honor international agreements.
On December 30, 2020, following the announcement of the EU-China Investment Agreement in principle between the EU and China, EC President Ursula von der Leyen hailed the agreement as “an important milestone in the EU’s value-based trade agenda with China.
Under the terms, if one party believes that the other is not complying with the agreement, it can convene an arbitration panel, which must submit a preliminary report within 150 days of the convening, and if it concludes that one party is not complying with the agreement, it must commit to measures to ensure compliance; if it still fails to meet its obligations, the other party has the right to cease complying with the agreement.
At present, the European Commission has still not released the full text of the Comprehensive Agreement on Chinese Investment.
The European Commission has clearly emphasized that the agreement with Beijing will not prevent the EU from cooperating with the US on China policy.
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