In a ‘non-paper’ seen by Agence Europe on Tuesday 26 May, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France, and Lithuania called for the European Union’s trade defence to be strengthened, just a few days before a policy debate on China within the European Commission.
Without naming Beijing directly, the five countries refer to “some of the European Union’s main trading partners”, who “are breaking with this multilateral framework by imposing new trade barriers or contributing to systemic and structural industrial overcapacity”. “This situation has had a direct impact on the European industry, which lost one million jobs between 2019 and 2025”, explained the countries behind the document.
Lithuania, a signatory to the document, had been directly confronted with Beijing’s threats in the past. In response to Taiwan opening a diplomatic representation in its capital Vilnius, China imposed coercive trade measures. The Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI) came into force two years later in response to this type of threat.
Faced with growing geopolitical tensions and threats to European industry, the five signatories call on the European Union to adopt a more aggressive trade policy, mobilising the tools at its disposal to guard against unfair competition.
Use existing procedures. The document begins by proposing short-term solutions to guarantee better conditions of competition, without changing the existing regulatory framework. A public hearing held by the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade (INTA) (see EUROPE 13850/10) highlighted a sharp increase in the number of investigations and anti-dumping duties in recent years, requiring more human resources. The letter calls on the Commission to allocate more resources to the departments and teams responsible for implementing trade defence instruments.
The signatories also urge the Commission to “consider more often” the use of safeguard measures, in addition to the other procedures already underway. They also call on the EU to challenge more systematically decisions that are manifestly incompatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization before the organisation’s Dispute Settlement Body.
Economic security. In the medium term, the authors of the document propose targeted adjustments to the European trade defence legal framework in order to better combat circumventions of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties. The text also calls for better integration of the notion of economic security into European trade policy in order to protect the EU’s strategic industries and value chains.
New defence instruments. In the longer term, the signatories are calling for the European trade arsenal to be expanded. Among the avenues mentioned is, for example, strengthening the anti-subsidy instrument to allow countervailing duties to be applied directly to companies rather than to countries or products.
The document also mentions a new ‘resilience tool’, which would be activated in the event of excessive concentration of European supply sources beyond a defined threshold. The EU could then resort to additional customs duties or tariff quotas to protect its producers.
According to Politico, tackling ‘global imbalances’ is an ‘absolute’ priority for France, which currently holds the presidency of the G7. These proposals, along with the conclusions of the policy debate at European level, should feed into discussions at the next Summit of G7 leaders in Evian-les-Bains from 15 to 17 June.
To consult the ‘non-paper’: https://aeur.eu/f/m1v (Original version in French by Juliette Verdes)