The back-and-forth between the European Commission, Washington and the EU Council over the last few days has borne fruit: on Tuesday 30 May, the Member States’ ambassadors to the EU approved the joint statement to be adopted at the end of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council on Wednesday 31 May. This could still be subject to minor last-minute changes during discussions between the European Commission and Washington.
For the time being, however, the Commission has managed to convince its transatlantic partner to remove certain references to China from the text, as requested by several EU Member States (see EUROPE 13189/9), according to the version of the text approved by the EU27 and seen by EUROPE.
The statement still refers to concerns shared by the EU and the US about “the impact of non-market economic policies, on the global supply of semiconductors”, but the reference to “in particular by China” has been removed.
In the same vein, the authors of the text no longer mention China and Russia as examples of countries that are increasingly using economic coercion.
On the other hand, Beijing is still directly singled out in the statement for its discriminatory policy on imported medical devices.
Changes have also been made to the text concerning outbound investment screening to satisfy the Council’s requests. It no longer speaks of cooperating and exchanging information linked to “the national security risks associated with certain outbound investments in sensitive technologies”. Instead, the EU and US “recognise” that appropriate measures to address these same risks “could be important to complement existing tools of targeted controls on exports and inbound investments”. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)