China sanctioned members of the European Parliament, provoking a high wave of boycott of the European-China investment agreement, important party groups demanded to agree to the agreement on the premise of lifting sanctions, while the President of the European Parliament said Europe is not sandbags can never accept intimidation, and threatened to take countermeasures against China.
The European Union sanctioned four Chinese officials and the Public Security Bureau of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps on human rights issues in Xinjiang on the 22nd. Beijing then retaliated against 10 people and four institutions in Europe, sanctioning five members of the European Parliament, as well as Dutch, Belgian and Lithuanian MPs, and the Political and Security Committee of the EU Council, the European Parliament’s Sub-Committee on Human Rights, the German Mercator Centre for Chinese Studies, and the Danish Democratic Union Foundation.
Compared to the European side, which carefully targeted Xinjiang officials for sanctions, the Chinese side made a big move to sanction the Political and Security Committee of the EU Council, which consists of 27 EU ambassadors, and five MEPs, in a move intended to show unprecedented toughness towards Brussels.
But China’s move to double the sanctions has sparked anger in the European Parliament and a groundswell of opposition to the EU-China investment agreement.
When the negotiations on the EU-China investment agreement were completed in principle at the end of December 2020, there was already opposition in the European Parliament because China had not made a substantive commitment to ratify the international convention against forced labor in the text.
The Social Democratic Group, the second largest party in the European Parliament, said that Europe needs to trade with China, but human rights and other values come first, and made it clear that lifting the sanctions on MEPs is a prerequisite for agreeing to negotiate an investment agreement with the Chinese government.
The Green Party in the European Parliament, on the other hand, said that the Chinese government would not gain trust by attacking some MEPs and would not consider putting the EU-China investment agreement on the parliamentary agenda as long as the sanctions were implemented.
Mr. Iuliu Winkler, the MEP in charge of China affairs in the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee, announced late on the 22nd that the meeting scheduled for the 23rd to discuss the EU-China investment agreement was cancelled, showing his response to China’s unreasonable sanctions.
The President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, after saying on the 22nd that China’s decision was unacceptable and would have consequences, said today that Europe was not China’s sandbag and would not accept any intimidation, threatening to take retaliatory action against Beijing, but he did not disclose whether the retaliatory action would include the rejection of the EU-China investment agreement.
Although many members of the European Parliament are currently vocal in their criticism of China, the European Parliament is composed of about 700 members of the 27 member states, and China is pulling in some of these countries through major construction, plus the potential for business opportunities in China’s open market, making the European Parliament is under scrutiny for actual action.
After the EU Executive Committee has completed the EU-China Investment Agreement, the text of the agreement needs to be reviewed and translated into dozens of EU languages, and then agreed by the 27 EU member states and approved by the European Parliament before it will come into force, and the whole process is expected to be completed in early 2022.
Recent Comments