The European Union flag is seen in front of the parliament building in Athens July 9, 2015. — Reuters pic
Potentially a big step in repairing Sino-European ties after the coronavirus outbreak in China and Beijing’s crackdown in Hong Kong, the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment would put most EU companies on an equal footing in China.“Negotiations are now in their final stages,” Wang Wenbin, a spokesman at the Chinese foreign ministry, said today.
Launched in 2014, negotiations were stuck for years. The EU complained that China was failing to make good on promises made to lift restrictions on European investment, despite its promises to open up the world’s second largest economy. A deal would be a turnaround from the pessimism of earlier this year, when the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said in June that he doubted a deal could be done by the end-2020 deadline agreed by both sides in 2019.China fears being isolated from the West as the United States steps up its trade war with Beijing and Brussels has taken steps to monitor Chinese investment in strategic European sectors more closely, a second EU official said.