EU And China Start High-Level Economic And Trade Talks

by Mary Swire, for LawAndTax-News.com

28 April 2008

The European Commission and the Chinese government on Friday launched their new High Level Economic and Trade Dialogue Mechanism (HLM) in Beijing.

The meeting was chaired by Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Qishan and EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson.

A further seven EU Commissioners and a total of 10 Chinese ministers participated. The two sides agreed on an ambitious and far-reaching remit for the dialogue and began focused discussions.

Speaking at the opening of the meeting, Commissioner Mandelson observed that:

“The EU and China are interdependent in more ways than we are different. We have to deal with the differences frankly and constructively. But the interdependence is a fact of twenty-first century life. This reality should drive us to see this dialogue, and others that it complements, as the most important work we do.”

During two afternoon sessions that lasted for a total of five hours, first exchanges covered trade and investment cooperation, balanced economic development, innovation and technology transfer and international economic development.

There were then more focussed discussions on energy issues, trade in high-tech, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection, and trade facilitation.

In future the Mechanism will tackle these and other issues including market access, transport, regulatory issues and standards.

On the EU side, the meeting was attended by Commissioners Meglena Kuneva (Consumer Protection), Vladimír Špidla (Social Affairs), Janez Potočnik (Research), Andris Piebalgs (Energy), László Kovács (Taxation and Customs), Louis Michel (Development), Stavros Dimas (Environment) and Peter Mandelson (Trade).

The group of Commissioners were in China as part of a visit led by European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso.

It is the largest joint mission abroad of the European Commission for a single meeting in its 50 years of existence.

The High Level Economic and Trade Dialogue Mechanism (HLM) is a Chinese initiative, and was agreed on at the November 2007 Summit by President Barroso and Premier Wen, in order to address the imbalance in trade flows between the EU and China.

The broad remit of the HLM is to examine the global trading system; strategic bilateral trade-related issues; investment; innovation, technology and IPR; and EU-China economic cooperation.

The Mechanism is designed to function as a complement and reinforcement to established EU-China dialogues.

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