The European Union is pursuing a unified approach vis-à-vis China, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on the first day of her three-day trip to the country on Thursday after French President Macron’s remarks on Taiwan drew criticism from EU partners.
Baerbock embarked on her trip just days after Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen jointly visited the country, and while she arrived in the country alone, she was keen to project EU unity on the first day of her trip.
Regarding China, Germany and its EU partners are not only “close to each other in terms of our interests and values, we also pursue common strategic approaches,” she told reporters at the sidelines of a visit in Tianjin, reported FAZ.
Baerbock’s remarks come after Macron raised eyebrows in Germany and other EU countries earlier this week when he said in an interview conducted during his flight back to France that the EU should keep an equal distance to China and the US in its Taiwan policy.
The German minister, meanwhile, said in a statement ahead of the trip that she would “underline the common European conviction that a unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, and especially military escalation, would be unacceptable.”
Baerbock also explicitly referred to France’s position: on the eve of her trip, Macron had “again underlined that the French China policy fully reflects the European China policy,” she said, adding that, for countries belonging to the same single market, it is “not even possible to have different positions on the largest trading partner.”
(Julia Dahm | EURACTIV.de)
Source: euractiv.com
