The European Commission has staked four months of negotiation with China on two days of meetings in Beijing, where Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič is due to co-chair the second session of the EU-China Trade and Investment Council on October 8 and 9.
Brussels set October as its own deadline for “tangible results” when the council was launched in June. No concession from Beijing has been made public since.
The bloc’s goods deficit with China reached about €360 billion in 2025 and has been widening by roughly €1 billion a day. Šefčovič has said repeatedly that Beijing must deliver by October or face harsher measures.
What Brussels wants is for China to limit what it ships into the single market, including caps on hybrid vehicle sales, and to extend the suspension of its rare-earth export controls beyond November 10. China’s commerce ministry has said it firmly opposes import quotas.
Beijing’s answer arrived early. Days before the visit it opened an anti-dumping investigation into a chemical imported from the EU, following a Commission inquiry in September into polyvinyl chloride imports from countries including China.
Denis Redonnet, the Commission’s chief trade enforcement officer, told the European Parliament’s trade committee on October 1 that almost a quarter of EU imports showed “potentially worrying trends”, driven mainly by Chinese goods. He pointed to machinery, textiles, base metals and chemicals.
Pressure is building inside the bloc as well, with German industry calling for a stricter China policy and chemical producers among those worst hit.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in August that the EU had opened 30 trade defence investigations in a year, nearly triple its usual rate, as Chinese imports rose 45 per cent in five years.
Rare earths remain the hardest point. China controls most of the world’s supply of the minerals and magnets used in cars, wind turbines and weapons, and its licensing regime has already forced production stoppages at European plants.
The second wave of Chinese export controls, announced in October 2025, was suspended until November 10 this year. European defence manufacturers would be left exposed if the suspension were allowed to lapse.
EU leaders meet in Brussels on October 15-16 and would decide then whether Beijing has offered enough to avoid retaliation. Among the instruments under discussion is a diversification tool requiring firms in critical sectors to hold at least three suppliers.
For now the bloc is asking its largest goods supplier to volunteer restraint, four months after it asked the same thing. Beijing has given no public sign that it intends to oblige.
