Jordi Solé highlights the need to change the EU-China relations

EFA Group President, Jordi Solé intervened in today's plenary to call for a change in the EU relations with China, following the recent visit to the Asian country of Ursula Von der Leyen, President of the European Commission and Emmanuel Macron, President of France.

 

MEP Solé pointed out the difficulty of coordinating an international strategy in the EU and how it benefits the rest of the non-European countries that try to “play us against each other” as President Vonder Leyen said in her speech. 

“As we know, one of our weaknesses as the EU is the difficulty in establishing unified and coherent foreign policy strategies. That this would happen to us with what is one of the most relevant strategies, our relationship with China, would be particularly serious."

"We have indeed a good basis to update such a strategy in President Von Der Leyen's recent speech at the EPC, which I can endorse almost from top to bottom.” He said.

 

The Catalan MEP also spoke about the critical situation in Taiwan and the increasing threats of a Chinese attack on the Island. 

 “The maintenance of the status quo in the Taiwan Strait is not an internal matter. If it breaks down due to increasing Chinese aggressiveness, this will have regional and international repercussions, as everyone knows. We cannot break the fragile European consensus on such sensitive issues with unilateral steps such as these.” He added. 

 

Jordi Solé MEP, called for a much needed change in the EU relations with China, highlighting the basic grounds the relationship should be built upon. 

“With China, we need to establish a relationship that takes into account both the evolution of the Chinese regime in recent years - more authoritarianism and more willingness to change the international order - as well as our own interests”

And this implies, cooperating bilaterally and multilaterally whenever possible; Reducing the enormous strategic dependencies that we have, which represent a high economic risk  and never giving up in the defence of human rights and democratic values.” He concluded.