FROM CHINA'S AMBASSADOR TO THE EU, A CAUTIONARY NOTE

    

""You know companies, capital, they're very skittish.  As soon as they hear 'screening' and 'oversight', their hearts start racing.  They want to wait and see." 

 

April 14, 2019 (Publication Date)

   

The last entry in this series looked at the April 9 EU-China Summit, which was held in Brussels, and which did in fact produce an up-beat joint statement.  One element of that was the parties' shared goal of achieving "an ambitious EU-China Comprehensive Investment Agreement in 2020."  Negotiating timetables are notoriously unreliable.  Still, the EU and China just might manage to complete an investment agreement next year. 

One wonders what it will contain.  Will it address China's concerns about screening?  If it does, how will it do it?  And will it shift the balance of responsibilities for investment decisions more towards the Commission?  Those questions are easy only in the sense that they can be anticipated.  The hard question is, what intervening events will most strongly influence the negotiation?  All in good time, as they say. 

The EU-China relationship will be the topic of the next GBD colloquium.  Updating Marco Polo: EU-China Trade and Investment in 2019 is the title for this event which will be held at the National Press Club, 2:15 - 3:45 PM on April 23, 2019.  Click HERE for the announcement for this program, including registration options.