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This September 14 should have been Angela Merkel’s big day.
This Monday, the chancellor wanted to hold a summit in Leipzig like the EU has never seen before: for the first time, the 27 heads of state and government will meet together with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Merkel’s idea was that the world should see that Europeans can speak with one voice. Although many EU countries have completely different interests with China.
The Leipzig Summit actually takes place this Monday afternoon. But completely different than planned. Because instead of the red carpet in the congress hall of the Leipzig Zoo, the participants sit in front of the screens in their offices in Berlin, Brussels and Beijing starting at 2 p.m. And instead of the 27 heads of state and of government, only participate the head of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the president of the Council, Charles Michel. Then there is Chancellor Merkel, due to the rotating presidency of the German Council.
Tangible progress? Nothing
The crisis in the crown has reduced Merkel’s grand summit to another of many video meetings. That doesn’t have to be bad news for the Chancellor. Sure, the beautiful images from the summit are now omitted. But that’s it. Diplomats from the EU and experts from China are sure that there would have been no tangible progress even at a real summit:
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Not with the so-called investment protection agreement, from which European entrepreneurs expect better access to the Chinese market
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and not with weather protection.
“Ms Merkel would have been ashamed,” the head of China’s delegation to the European Parliament, Reinhard Bütikofer (Greens), told SPIEGEL. “Relations between the EU and the People’s Republic are worse than they have been in decades.”
So, how nice that it is not so noticeable in a short video conference.
China’s policy should have become the focus of the foreign policy of the German Council Presidency. Europeans must recognize “with what determination China is claiming a leadership position,” the Chancellor said some time ago in a speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. This challenge must be “accepted with confidence.”
Josep Borrell, EU Foreign Affairs representative, also urged unity at the meeting of ambassadors at the Foreign Office at the end of May: “We only have one chance if we act unanimously towards China.” In an essay published by the EU’s diplomatic chief in August, it becomes even clearer: Europeans must reduce their dependence on China to continue to be able to “make political decisions autonomously.”
The only problem is that it did not go that far before achieving unity with China.
While Chinese investments are more than welcome in countries like Greece, which suffered the consequences of the euro crisis for a long time, and hardliners like Viktor Orbán in Hungary may even draw something from the authoritarian Chinese social model, the fear of political influence grew in Brussels for a long time. that Beijing is buying.
In recent months, however, the chaos has settled, at least a little. The days of established EU prime ministers pleading with Beijing to invest in roads and railways appear to be slowly over.
“Since the beginning of the crown crisis, EU member states have approached each other in their assessment of the challenges posed by China,” says a European Council on Foreign Relations document from early September, a group of foreign policy experts. “On the Chinese side, the level of arrogance and aggressiveness continues to rise,” says Bütikofer, a Chinese expert. “So Europe is coming to the inevitable idea that it cannot be tackled and is therefore better held together.”
China is expected to face a tougher and more united EU at the Leipzig video summit than at similar events in the past. And Merkel, the promoter of the Leipzig idea, as Green Bütikofer sees it, suddenly finds herself there as the one that is much more cautious of China than other EU partners.
Indications of a more robust European rhythm compared to Beijing can hardly be overlooked:
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In China’s new strategy, the EU Commission referred to the country in March 2019 for the first time as a “systemic rival” or “competitor”.
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In mid-June, the EU Deputy Commissioner and Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, presented a strategy paper on the question of how European companies can be better valued before acquisitions from abroad that obtain advantages through state aid. . Even if the name was not mentioned, it was clear against whom the deliberations are primarily directed.
The head of the EU Commission made a correspondingly clear statement in the last video meeting with the Chinese in late June. Von der Leyen had not only sought the advice of his company’s China experts for the appointment, but had also made a short detour to Berlin beforehand to exchange ideas with the people in the expert group. That obviously had an effect.
During the four-hour video broadcast, only two hours were planned, he not only urged China to respect human and civil rights, given the demonstrations in Hong Kong, a matter of course. It also raised other nasty problems, such as Chinese cyberattacks on hospitals in the EU.
In any case, the Europeans do not like the way the Chinese tried to profit politically from the crown crisis. The word was interrupted, it was argued, that was what was heard later. Often this did not exist with formats that were normally tightly bound.
It goes without saying that in this environment it will be difficult to achieve success. For her true Leipzig summit, Merkel would have liked above all that both parties would finally sign the investment agreement that the Chinese and the Europeans have been negotiating since 2013. After all, although it is not a question of fair conditions of competition for European companies in China, Chinese companies have much freer access to the European market.
Xi wants to wait for the US elections
But EU diplomats assume that a deal can be reached before the end of the year at best. Others ask how much the deal is worth as long as China is unwilling to reduce the Communist Party’s influence on state-owned companies and the preferential treatment given to these companies.
That leaves climate protection. If China were to introduce an emissions trading system, Merkel praised the class meeting of the global business elite in Davos in late January, “a large part of the world would have been covered.”
The EU wants to be climate neutral by 2050, a goal Xi and the Chinese would like to commit to at least by 2060. But he, EU diplomats say, wants to wait and see if the United States returns to the circle of those who are. behind the Paris climate agreement. In other words: Xi wants to wait for the US elections in November.
The mood in which the three EU leaders talk to the Chinese president should be interesting. The Chinese attacks in Hong Kong, the increasingly aggressive attitude of China towards Taiwan, the human rights violations in dealing with Tibetans and Uighurs, it is hard to imagine that the EU representatives could ignore all this.
