Thu December, 2020, Age: 3 years
At a closed-door meeting to discuss Europe’s strategy, Sabine Weyand, Brussels’ top trade bureaucrat, told lawmakers from the European Parliament that the European Commission would propose a “Transatlantic Trade and Technology Council” to set joint standards on new technologies. This would target one of the big objectives of both the Europeans and Americans: Preventing China from establishing economic dominance across a number of high-value sectors by developing its own widely used technological and industrial standards.
This proposal marks a key shift in European attitudes towards China. Although lawmakers have been wary about the potential implications of growing Chinese influence around the world for several, European leaders had previously tried to maintain a position of relative independence amid an ongoing U.S.-China technology and trade war. On the contentious issue of 5G procurement, European states have responded to the potential danger of Chinese equipment in a disjointed variety of ways. This proposal sends a signal that the EU as whole has decided to align itself more closely with the U.S., lending more strength to the incoming Biden administration’s plan to establish closer transatlantic ties on a number of security and economic issues.