On Tuesday 18 April, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini announced that the EU wanted to strengthen its cooperation with China on international issues, and added that the EU-China summit later in the year would be an opportunity to look into this subject more deeply.
"The EU and China share the view of a global order based on multilateralism and on the UN system: our cooperation has never been so important, in a moment when multilateral global governance is put in question from many sides", Mogherini told Chinese news agency Xinhua during her stay in China. "It is essential that Europe and China continue to defend a fair and open international order. We must prove through concrete gestures that we support cooperation, real commitment, and strong and fair international rules", she added.
In Mogherini's view, stronger commitment from Beijing in international affairs would enable "many opportunities to be opened up, in many areas of common interest". "China can play a very positive role on so many fields, from Afghanistan to Syria, and we Europeans are ready to step up our cooperation in all these fields", she announced, saying she also hoped that the EU and China could contribute to making headway on the situation in the Korean peninsula.
Mogherini mentioned other areas of cooperation, especially defence, noting that the respective commands in Mali and Somalia had identified new cooperation opportunities in the area of capacity development support. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)