Strasbourg, 24/04/2008 (Agence Europe) - With tensions over the Olympic Games and Tibet as a backdrop, exacerbated by Benita Ferrero-Waldner's recent appeal to the Chinese government to, “engage in constructive and substantial dialogue with the Dalai-lama”, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, accompanied by eight of his colleagues, as well as the Commissioner for external relations - Peter Mandelson (trade), Stavros Dimas (Environment), Andris Piebalgs (Energy), Janez Potocnik (Research), Louis Michel (Development), Vladimír Spidla (Education), Meglena Kuneva (Consumers) and László Kovács (Taxation and Customs) was expected for Thursday 24 April in Beijing for a two day visit. The fight against global warming and economic and trade negotiations are expected to proved the outline of the high level discussions involving the Chinese president Hu Jintao and his prime minister Wen Jiabao. In this context, representatives from the Commission and the Chinese government will inaugurate the new high level economic and trade dialogue mechanism on Friday 25 April, which is aimed at tackling increasing friction between the two sides. At the insistent demand of the Europeans, the Chinese agreed in principle to this dialogue at the EU/China summit in November 2007. the EU wants to use this new vector for dialogue to obtain concrete results on the trade deficit, access for European companies to the Chinese market and intellectual property questions. The two sides are still negotiating the agenda and frequency of the new mechanism meetings, the former want a bi-annual meeting and the latter an annual meeting. Although the Commission is only expecting limited results in trade, it does want to deepen bilateral cooperation in all areas, particularly climate change and sustainable development, as well as energy security, product safety, research and education. Each commissioner in Beijing will meet his Chinese counterpart for a bilateral meeting. (E.H.)