The EU remarks come amid a surge of Chinese exports to the EU, at a time when US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are already hurting the bloc’s exporters…reports Asian Lite News
EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic said the European Union will raise concerns at the World Trade Organisation this week over China flooding European markets with cheap goods, warning it is hurting local industries.
Sefcovic said he will demand serious reform of the WTO during a meeting in Cameroon this Thursday and make it crystal clear that China’s economic rise has meant the global trade environment has dramatically changed in recent decades, according to a report in the Euractiv news portal.
He said that “a new balance” is now required with the rise of China to adjust the rights and obligations of WTO members, which he said is necessary to combat the overcapacities that are creating a lot of problems in the European economy, the report stated.
He said he would seek a level playing field, as overcapacity and non-market policies must be better tackled than in the past.
The Slovak commissioner’s remarks come amid a surge of Chinese exports to the EU, at a time when US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are already hurting the bloc’s exporters and causing vast quantities of cheap Chinese-manufactured goods to be redirected towards Europe, the report states.
Brussels’ trade deficit with Beijing surged from $335 billion in 2024 to $375 billion in 2025, according to data collected by Bruegel, an EU policy think tank. Beijing’s global trade surplus also hit a record $1.2 trillion last year — a figure it is set to far surpass in 2026.
In addition to confronting China, Sefcovic also called for “new governance models” to facilitate trade disputes between member states. The US has long hobbled the WTO court system by blocking the appointment of judges to its appellate body, thus allowing WTO members to effectively obviate court rulings by ‘appealing into the void’.
China, the world’s second-largest economy and the EU’s third-largest trading partner, joined the WTO in 2001, six years after the Geneva-based international trade organisation was created.
