The European Union is poised to toughen its trade stance towards China, with the bloc set to insist that Chinese investors in Europe transfer technology to local firms, and as it formulates a response to Beijing’s latest restrictions on rare earth exports.
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Trade chief Maros Sefcovic insisted on Tuesday that the bloc was open to investments from China but only under the right conditions.
These conditions include the creation of “real value added” in the EU, the creation of “real jobs”, and that there “will be real technology and real intellectual property “transferred, as European companies [have] been doing when they’ve been investing in China”.
Sefcovic was speaking at a press conference following a meeting of EU trade ministers in Denmark. Earlier on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Brussels was going to propose new rules forcing non-EU companies to hand over their tech know-how to local operators if they want to invest in the single market, as part of an Industrial Accelerator Act to be proposed in November.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen supported the idea, recommending that Europe take a leaf out of the US’ and China’s books on having a more muscular trade policy.
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“I think we should be inspired of what the US and China, to some extent, are doing – talking about trade, setting up some preconditions. If we invite Chinese investments to Europe, it must come with the precondition that we also have some kind of technology transfer,” said Rasmussen, who hosted the meeting.
