La tedesca Merz propone un accordo commerciale UE-Cina mentre le capitali europee si ammorbidiscono nei confronti di Pechino

**Germany’s Merz floats EU-China trade deal as European capitals soften on Beijing**

*Remarks urging ‘strategic partnerships around the world’ underscore how tensions with the US are inducing a more accommodating stance*

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said **he can imagine a trade deal with China in the future**, signalling a new softening stance towards Beijing in European capitals.

“We have set quite a lot in motion when it comes to trade policy. I can also envisage further agreements, for example, in the longer term an agreement with the People’s Republic of China,” Merz said in the German parliament on Wednesday.

Merz’s remarks underscore how surging trade and geopolitical tensions with Washington are nudging parts of Europe towards a more accommodating stance on China, even as Brussels insists the conditions for any formal deal remain far from being met.

Beijing has been putting the feelers out regarding a potential trade pact with the 27-member union for months, as a flurry of EU leaders and ministers have travelled to the Chinese capital. Merz’s comments – weeks after he returned from his first visit to China as chancellor – suggested the overtures had found receptive ears.

“We now need strategic partnerships around the world in order to strengthen ourselves, especially our exports,” Merz added, in comments sparked by a trade deal agreed between the EU and Australia this week.

According to sources in Brussels, there were no immediate plans to launch free-trade talks with China, as the EU would prefer that Chinese leaders fix problems in the trading relationship. The EU asserts that Beijing is ignoring its complaints about the opacity of China’s state subsidies and what it describes as the resulting industrial overcapacity and surge in cut-price exports to Europe. Beijing’s export controls on rare earths, meanwhile, have become a spoiler in the relationship since their imposition last year. In a speech in Australia on Tuesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc “cannot and will not absorb China’s export-led growth model and its industrial overcapacity”.

“Both the threat to our supply-chain security and the shock to our industrial base need urgent responses.”

Across the first two months of 2026, China’s trade surplus with the EU expanded by 40 per cent, and 139 per cent in the case of Germany, compared with a year earlier, according to the South China Morning Post’s calculations based on Chinese customs data.

“This is quite a stunning statement,” said Noah Barkin, an analyst of EU-China relations at the Rhodium Group, about Merz’s comments.

“Beijing has been pushing the idea of [a free-trade agreement] with the EU because it wants to keep the European market open for its goods.

“The Chinese market, meanwhile, is gradually closing down to EU and especially German exports as part of an explicit Chinese policy of import substitution.”

Wednesday also saw a burst of diplomacy between China and the new Dutch government, including a call between Premier Li Qiang and Prime Minister Rob Jetten, and a meeting of the sides’ trade ministers on the margins of the World Trade Organization’s ministerial conference in Cameroon. It was the Yaounde meeting that caught the eye: images of Dutch trade chief Sjoerd Sjoerdsma smiling with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao would have been unimaginable just a few months ago. The Dutch minister has been sanctioned by Beijing since 2021, when he was one of a number of lawmakers slapped with a visa ban and asset freeze after he secured a Dutch parliamentary majority for his proposal labelling the Chinese treatment of its Uygur minority as “genocide”, charges China denies.

Now, Sjoerdsma is planning to go to Beijing for trade talks, suggesting the sanctions are not being enforced.

“Had a constructive conversation with Chinese Minister Wang Wentao at #WTOMC14,” he posted on social media. “We discussed our strong trade & investment partnership and WTO reforms. We agreed to hold economic and trade consultations in China soon, I will use this opportunity to lead a trade mission there.”

On Thursday, EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic is to meet his Chinese counterpart at the same event, where he is expected to raise Brussels’ many gripes with commercial ties. Described by insiders as a “stocktake” meeting, it would mark the latest in a series of EU-China engagements this week after a period of relative quiet.

On Monday, the bloc’s top trade enforcer Denis Redonnet travelled to Beijing for a round of negotiations on export controls, while on Tuesday, a delegation from the People’s Liberation Army met EU defence officials in Brussels. But Sefcovic was unlikely to hold detailed talks on a trade deal, sources said.

Even in the EU’s most traditionally hawkish quarters, signs of thaw towards Beijing surfaced.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene on Monday said the tiny Baltic state had got “exactly zero benefit” from Taiwan and “a significant negative one” from Beijing in relation to the opening of a controversially titled Taiwanese diplomatic presence in Vilnius agreed under the previous government.

“The main mistake was made when we rushed ahead … and established an office under a name that no one else in the EU had used until now, thus finally severing all, even business, relations with China,” the social democratic leader said.

“What did this bring us? Exactly zero benefit from Taiwan and a significant negative one from China,” Ruginiene told Lithuanian news portal Lrytas.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including all EU members, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but the United States is opposed to any attempt to take the self-ruled island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.

The Taiwanese Representative Office was opened in 2021. Its name veered from the norm in Europe, where their diplomats usually operate out of “Taipei Economic and Trade Offices”.

The row saw China remove Lithuania from its customs system, meaning its exporters could not ship goods to the country. Exports to China were effectively wiped out overnight, as Beijing said Vilnius had violated the EU’s one-China policy. Beijing also expelled its ambassador, while also withdrawing its own envoy from Lithuania.

On Tuesday, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda downplayed the likelihood of the office being renamed.

“We must understand the issue of the name of the Taiwanese Representative Office was resolved several years ago,” Nauseda said.

“One can call it a mistake or something else, but it was an achievement for Taiwan in its relations with other countries. It was a stake they drove into the ground … Communist China’s reaction to this fact was what it was; it has not changed significantly, we are not ready to accept ultimate demands under any conditions,” he said.

Nauseda added that any change to the office’s name would require agreement from both Lithuania and Taiwan.

It is understood that the centre-left government in Vilnius is upset that Taiwan did not make good on spending commitments it pledged around the time the office opened in 2021.

In January 2022, Taipei announced a US$200 million fund for investments in Lithuanian industry and a US$1 billion fund for “joint Lithuanian-Taiwanese business projects”.

Vilius Kriauciunas, chief political and economic adviser of the Lithuanian Business Confederation, estimated that only a “few tens of millions of euros in loans and a few tens of millions in capital investments” made their way to Lithuania in the intervening four years.

Sources close to Taipei suggested it was a challenge to get private companies to invest in Lithuania due to a lack of concrete opportunities and the fact that the government was unable to direct where business’ capital should go.

“Our job is not to question Lithuanian foreign policy,” Kriauciunas said.

“We would like to remind Taiwan that they promised to invest US$1 billion, but they put in 1 or 2 per cent. When we talk about solidarity and values, keeping your promises is one of the main values.”

This is going to work out well … /s

China is already destroying industries here while shielding its own markets, so first of all trade should be rebalanced

Must be amazing for China, seeing donald fuck up so bad not only is America on a massive decline, China is on a meteoric rise

Chinese here, I do think a comprehensive China-EU trade deal is dead on arrival. In the eyes of China’ leadership, Brussels is too busy with Atlanticist moral high-grounding to talk real business. China has pivoted from the EU bloc to a ‘carrot and stick’ strategy with individual states. like doubling down on pragmatic partners like Spain and Hungary for EV hubs, while engaging Italy and Greece on infrastructure, effectively bypassing Brussels.

We just got out of being reliant on Russia so time to find a new autocracy to become friens with. Worked great last time after all.