EU Eyes Climate, Energy, Trade in New China Talks
Date: 15-Jan-07
Country: BELGIUM
Author: David Brunnstrom
EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner will begin the talks in China on Wednesday on a pact which will also cover economic ties now worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year and reflect Beijing's increasing global reach.
The Partnership and Cooperation Agreement is intended to replace a trade and economic pact more than 20 years old. As well as trade and economic matters it will cover agriculture, transport, customs, education, science, information, security and counter-terrorism, plus the environment and energy.
The EU announced plans on Wednesday for big cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions and wants to encourage big polluters like China to follow suit. It also hopes for cooperation rather than competition from China in securing future energy supplies.
"China is opening a new coal-fired power station every week and it's clear we can't achieve any of our objectives on emissions without China," Ferrero-Waldner's spokeswoman said.
"It is essential China is a partner in tackling climate change and that it is a partner in reviewing energy security."
Ferrero-Waldner will discuss a climate change partnership in place since 2005 and the possibility of selling China new near-zero-emissions coal plant projects based on EU technology.
"It is very important that the climate change partnership is implemented and we get results from it," her spokeswoman said.
EU officials say they do not know how long the negotiations might take.
SENSITIVITIES
Axel Berkofsky, of the European Policy Centre think tank, said the pact would essentially codify existing EU-China ties.
However, China was upset by EU criticisms on trade and human rights in policy papers issued last year and was likely to prove reluctant to go as far in the talks as Brussels would hope on issues like rights and Taiwan, he said.
"I am pretty certain China will push the EU not to talk too much about human rights and maybe to leave Taiwan off the whole thing and agree to talk about trade issues behind closed doors."
China has pressed the EU to recognise it as a market economy, a move that would help fight anti-dumping cases, and to lift an arms embargo put in place after the Tiananmen Square killings in 1989.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao called again this week for a lifting of the arms embargo. But the EU's executive Commission said this was a matter for the 27 EU states to decide and there was no prospect of this any time soon.
On trade, volumes have expanded enormously and heavily in China's favour, but China bristles at anti-dumping duties levied by the EU on Chinese-made shoes and some other goods.
EU trade negotiators hope to lower restrictions for European companies investing in sectors such as China's automobile or petrochemicals sectors and to get more access to the country's vast public procurement market.
But some Chinese economists have argued that Beijing should strengthen barriers against foreign investment, not remove them, because of the risk of losing control to foreign corporations.
(Additional reporting by William Schomberg in Brussels and Ben Blanchard in Beijing)
