ABSTRACT

Improving trade conditions is considered fundamental to create jobs, to increase the quality of living conditions, to reduce geopolitical tensions and so on. In spite of the new tendencies in favour of protectionism, which reflect both nationalistic sentiments and geopolitical turmoil in world’s strategic regions, China and the EU represent one of the most dynamic trade and economic relation at international level. This trade relation has increased in the last 20 years reaching 42% of global traffic in 2015. In June 2017, for example, the European Council’s President Donald Tusk underlined the EU-China strong cooperation and the good perspective for future development. In this respect, Chinese implementation of the BRI is a unique opportunity. However, EU-China relations in the framework of the BRI have to confront with many geopolitical and geo-economic criticalities.

In this paper, we firstly present some main strategic complementarities and problems in the EU-China economic cooperation in the framework of the BRI, emphasizing positive trends of the recent years and at the same time the existing political criticalities. Secondly, we focus on the EU institutional process to amend and issue the new European Trade Defence Rules between 2016 and 2017. The new regulation is aimed to protect EU members from dumped and subsidized imports from not EU member and was thought in relation to China’s “market economy status”. Thirdly, a section is dedicated to the European Commission’s new proposal of regulation to scrutinize inbound investments from third countries. These debates and the related legislative procedures hold important implications for China, because as a matter of facts China is indeed the main, quasi-exclusive, target of the EU antidumping (AD) and anti-subsidize (AS) probes, but also of the new regulations on foreign investments in certain sectors. Finally, concluding remarks with policy advice summarize the main points emerged from the entire analysis.

Keywords: EU-China relations, BRI, TDI, MES, antidumping, anti-subsidizing

JEL Classification: H70, K20, L41