Séjourné is the most vocal public champion of tougher action but Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra also told POLITICO that he was a “hardliner” on the issue: “What I’m going to make part of the conversation [on Friday], I am worried about our significant dependencies on China, where we pretty much have the same track record as with Russia.”
But others, like Teresa Ribera, are positioning themselves as more nuanced on the debate and more open to working with China, arguing that cooperation serves Europe’s interests better than potential confrontation.
With the debate just getting started, the real question may be whether the EU can mobilize its trade defenses in time to fend off a flood of Chinese exports that — already shut out of the United States by President Donald Trump’s protectionist tariffs — are being redirected to the EU’s more open market.
“Our biggest challenge is not necessarily just the lack of tools. It’s a question of making them and putting them into use,” Grzegorz Stec, of the MERICS think tank, told the Brussels Playbook Week Ender podcast.
“It’s really important that we build credible European deterrence,” added Stec. “This is one of the issues on which we struggle vis-à-vis Beijing.”
Francesca Micheletti, Zie Weise, Camille Gijs, Jordyn Dahl, Sarah Wheaton, Gregorio Sorgi and Romanus Otte contributed reporting.