European Commission vice-president Teresa Ribera has warned China that the EU will not tolerate “dumping” of low-cost Chinese electric vehicles in Europe. And she rejected the idea that the EU should accept “cheap equipment” to help member-states to reach their decarbonisation goals.
“We need to preserve an open economy, an open market such as the European one on the basis of transparency, predictability, rule of law, and level playing field,” she said.
“There is this assumption that counting on cheap equipment could be good to boost the potential of new developments and new decarbonisation pathways in the European market that could be beneficial. And there may be truth on one side, but as you also know, it may be difficult in terms of how it could impact on the capacity to ensure a level playing field. So we cannot accept any type of dumping practices.”
Ms Ribera, who is responsible for climate policy in the European Commission, was speaking in Beijing at the end of the sixth EU-China High Level Environmental and Climate Dialogue. She said it was clear during the meeting, which she co-chaired with Chinese vice-premier Ding Xuexiang, that the EU and China shared a commitment to the Paris Agreement on climate change and a confidence in the economic benefits of decarbonisation.
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“The climate agenda is a joint agenda. It’s probably the topic where we feel most comfortable, where we share values, where we share the conviction that it is the way forward, that it has to happen in the context of the UN system, and that it is very important to back the multilateral context and the Paris Agreement,” she said.
Climate change will be on the agenda when Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president António Costa arrive in Beijing next week for an EU-China summit. The meeting has been scaled back from two days to one amid disagreements about trade and China’s diplomatic and economic support for Russia.
EU officials last week cast doubt on whether the two sides would agree a joint declaration on climate change during the summit and Ms Ribera declined to predict that they would do so. Beijing is seeking closer ties with Europe in the face of Donald Trump’s tariff policy but Brussels complains that China has done little to address European grievances.
Trade figures on Monday showed that China’s exports continued to grow in June, jumping by 5.8 per cent compared to a year earlier, despite US tariffs of about 55 per cent on Chinese goods. China ended the first half of 2025 with a record trade surplus of about USD586 billion.
Analysts suggest that Chinese manufacturers have been front-loading exports to the US in case tariffs rise higher in the coming months. But exports to other parts of the world, including the EU, have also continued to rise.
