Bundestag panel urges EU to be able to strike back at China on trade
The Bundestag's China commission calls for tougher EU trade tools, citing access to the single market as the key lever, a day after the EU's disputed deal with Beijing.
Symbolic image · Photo: Ansgar Koreng / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de (cropped and resized)
An expert commission set up by the German parliament has urged the European Union to take a tougher line on China. "The EU should be capable of retaliating in the event of escalatory measures by China in trade disputes," the panel says in its first half-year report, according to Welt am Sonntag. It identifies conditioning access to the European single market as a central lever, given China's export-driven economic model.
The Commission for the Review of Security-Relevant Economic Relations between Germany and China was established in November 2025 and includes experts from 13 organizations, among them academics, foundation representatives, business lobbyists and trade unionists. Peter Leibinger, president of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), called for faster, less bureaucratic and more uniform tools against dumping and unfair subsidies.
The report comes a day after the EU and China agreed that Beijing would export fewer hybrid cars to Europe. Commission member Juergen Matthes of the German Economic Institute was sceptical, telling Der Spiegel that countervailing duties on Chinese imports threatening European production would be "the better and more targeted tool".