Robin Emmott -
The European Union will seek Asian support for free trade, the Iran nuclear deal and combating global warming at a regional summit that includes China, Japan and Russia as a counterbalance to a more protectionist United States.
Leaders from the European Union, Switzerland and Norway will welcome 21 Asian counterparts including China’s Premier Li Keqiang after an EU summit dominated by negotiations over Britain’s departure from the world’s biggest trading bloc.
The 51 gathered leaders are set to show “strong support” for the World Trade Organisation that US President Donald Trump had threatened to quit, and express “profound alarm” about climate change, according to a draft communique.
Leaders representing 55 per cent of global trade will underline “their joint commitment to open, free and non-discriminatory trade” and “to fight all forms of protectionism”, according to the draft.
Trump says the United States is treated badly in global trade and has blamed the WTO for allowing that to happen. Separately, the United States and China have imposed billions of dollars of tariffs on each other’s goods while Trump has also complained about an unfair EU trade surplus with Washington.
“This is a message that the European Union is more than Brexit and that Europe has friends beyond Washington,” said a senior EU official involved in preparing the summit, which has taken place every two years since 1996.
On Friday, the EU will sign a free-trade deal with Singapore. The bloc is also pushing for approval for another free-trade agreement with Vietnam.
However, the European Union is trying not to side with China against the United States. On Tuesday, EU trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom held talks with US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in Brussels on improving trade ties, although Washington accused the bloc of moving too slowly in negotiations.
The EU-Asia summit meeting will also pressure Beijing to combat what Europe says is China’s harmful overproduction of steel and the final statement is set to say that leaders agreed to tackle “excess capacity in industrial sectors”, according to the draft, which could still be modified by diplomats.
China, which produces and consumes half the world’s steel and, has cut some 220 million tonnes of capacity since January 2016. But the European Union remains intent on pressuring China to cut more, as well as to remove subsidies — a policy that the West says is aimed at dominating global markets.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is due to discuss subsidies with Li at a lunch on Friday, diplomats said.
Bolstering the Iran nuclear deal signed by global powers in 2016, and that Trump has withdrawn from, is also another priority of the summit. — Reuters
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