OPEN LETTER: Madam von der Leyen, Europe Must Choose Between China and Itself

OPEN LETTER: Madam von der Leyen, Europe Must Choose Between China and Itself

Introduction: The Letter Europe Does Not Dare Write to Itself

€360 Billion — A Number That Says Everything

Madam President, allow me to begin with a number. In 2025, the European Union recorded its largest ever trade deficit with China: €360 billion. One billion euros per day, every day, for the entire year. For the first time in history, every EU member state — all twenty-seven — finished the year with a trade deficit toward Beijing. You said it yourself, at the G7 summit in Évian on June 15, 2026: "This is not a sustainable model."

You are right, Madam President. And yet, the European Union left the Brussels European Council of June 19, 2026 without concrete measures, without a list of protected sectors, without a reciprocity mechanism with a fixed schedule. Leaders "asked the Commission to explore enhanced trade defenses." Thank you. Meanwhile, Chinese imports into the EU increased by 45% over five years. I am taking up my pen — symbolically — to ask you: when do we move from analysis to doctrine?

What This Letter Is Not

This open letter is not a call for irresponsible decoupling. It is not an anti-Chinese letter. China is a real trading partner, with interdependencies that neither Europe nor Beijing can ignore. It is not a personal attack on your leadership either — your commitment on this file is genuine, your analysis lucid, and your desire to equip Europe with more robust trade defense tools is legitimate.

This letter is a call for coherence between what Europe says and what it does. Between the diagnosis and the remedy. Between the Brussels declaration and the reciprocity doctrine we have not yet formalized. It is written by someone who deeply believes that a united Europe is the best response to the challenges of this century — and who is concerned that Europe is losing its capacity to unite on what matters.

The Trade Deficit as a Symptom of Structural Dependence

€360 Billion Tells Only Part of the Story

Madam President, the figure of €360 billion in trade deficit is revealing, but it does not tell the whole story. What Eurostat statistics also show is the nature of this deficit: in value, the deficit more than doubled over ten years, but in volume, it multiplied by five over the same period. This means we are importing far more Chinese goods, at a lower unit price. These are cheap products, massively subsidized by the Chinese state, entering at prices below their production costs — what international trade law calls "dumping" — and eroding our industrial base.

At the end of the first quarter of 2026, the deficit had already reached €98 billion — the highest since the third quarter of 2022. The trajectory is not a cyclical question. It is structural. The 29 million jobs that the European Central Bank estimates are "at very high risk in the coming months due to the trade deficit" are not a political metaphor. They are families, regions, local economies.

The Critical Dependencies the Number Does Not Show

Beyond the raw deficit, there is the question of critical dependencies. According to the Allianz Institute, Europe now has approximately 400 critical dependencies on China, compared to 253 in 2016. A third of Chinese imports into Europe involve products for which we have no reasonably accessible alternative in the short term — rare earths, batteries, certain electronic components. This dependence means that in a major geopolitical tension scenario — a conflict over Taiwan, for example — Europe could not maintain its economy at current capacity for an extended period.

You used the right expression: "de-risking, not decoupling." But de-risking requires a precise inventory of risks and a reduction plan on a defined schedule. The question I am asking you is simple: does there exist, somewhere in the Commission's files, a plan with precise dependency-reduction objectives, sector by sector, with milestones and budgets? If yes, why is it not public? If no, why not?

The "De-Risking" Policy: Fine Doctrine, Insufficient Execution

Since 2023: Words and Few Measures

Madam President, since your landmark 2023 speech on "de-risking" — which marked a real turning point in the Commission's positioning on China — what has concretely happened? The EU imposed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles — a welcome measure, but in only one sector. It launched 18 anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations, 18 of which target Chinese producers — this is significant. It adopted the Foreign Subsidies Regulation — a useful tool but whose implementation is still nascent.

And in the same period, the trade deficit with China continued to increase. Chinese imports continued to grow. European direct investments in China — and vice versa — continued to weave interdependencies that any real de-risking policy will eventually have to address. The gap between the rhetoric and the economic facts is not a communication problem. It is a governance problem.

The Political Lock: The 27 Who Cannot Agree

I will not tell you anything new, Madam President: an important part of the problem is the difficulty of uniting 27 member states around a coherent commercial policy toward China. Germany — which long championed trade with Beijing — has recently changed its tone, notably since Chancellor Merz's statements about the "unhealthy" deficit. But smaller countries or those more dependent on Chinese investments — Orbán's Hungary leading the way — persist in blocking the most ambitious measures.

The institutional solution is not simple. But the June 2026 European Council gave the Commission a mandate to develop new trade defense tools. This is a signal. The question is whether the Commission will use it with the necessary determination — by proposing concrete measures before the State of the Union speech in September 2026 — or whether it will use it to produce another report recommending that the question be studied.

The Current Interdependence Model Is a Time Bomb

The Lessons of Russian Gas

Madam President, Europe learned — painfully — what it meant to depend on an autocratic power for a strategic resource. The dependence on Russian gas, built over decades of economically rational but strategically blind calculations, transformed into an existential vulnerability when Moscow decided to use energy as a weapon after February 24, 2022. The forced energy transition of 2022–2023 cost the European economy hundreds of billions of euros.

Dependence on China for critical industrial components, rare earths, batteries, and certain clean energy transition technologies is the Russian gas of the 21st century. This is not an alarmist metaphor — it is a structural analysis. If Beijing decided, in the context of tensions over Taiwan or any other issue, to use its exports as pressure leverage, Europe would find itself in a vulnerability position analogous to the one it experienced with gas. The difference is that one cannot replace Chinese rare earths as quickly as one can open an LNG terminal.

The Most At-Risk Sectors

The sectors where critical dependence on China is most acute, according to available analyses, include: permanent magnets and rare earths (essential for electric motors, wind turbines, and defense systems), electric vehicle batteries (where China controls the entire value chain from materials to assembly), solar panels (more than 80% of components come from China), and certain active pharmaceutical molecules. In each of these sectors, a political decision by Beijing to restrict exports would create an immediate crisis for European industry and defense.

China has moreover demonstrated its willingness to use this lever. Chinese export restrictions on gallium and germanium in 2023, followed by restrictions on graphite in 2024, constituted explicit warnings. Beijing does not hide that it has these instruments. The question is whether Europe will continue to ignore them until they are used against it.

Reciprocity as Doctrine: Why It Is Right and Necessary

The Fundamental Principle: A Level Playing Field

Madam President, the doctrine of commercial reciprocity is not protectionism — it is the application of the fundamental principle of a level playing field in international trade. The EU offers China access to its market of 450 million consumers, among the wealthiest in the world. In return, European companies face in China significant tariff and non-tariff barriers, technology transfer requirements, restrictions on foreign ownership in strategic sectors, and competition from state-owned enterprises benefiting from subsidies their European counterparts cannot match.

This is not a free-market relationship — it is a structural asymmetry. The appropriate response is not total decoupling, which would be economically costly and diplomatically counterproductive. The appropriate response is to condition the maintenance of access to the European market on verifiable progress on reciprocal access to the Chinese market. Not as punishment, but as basic logic: open markets deserve open markets in return.

The Tools Already Exist — They Need to Be Used

The EU already has an arsenal of trade instruments: anti-dumping measures, countervailing duties, the International Trade Defense Instrument (IDS), the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI). These tools were developed precisely to respond to situations like this one. But their use is still too timid, too slow, and too fragmented to constitute a coherent reciprocity doctrine.

What we are asking for — what many observers, economists, and European industrialists are asking for — is not the invention of new tools. It is their systematic, coordinated, and rapid mobilization within an explicit strategy. Give us the strategy. Publish it. Make it visible. European citizens and businesses have the right to know how their continent intends to manage this asymmetric trade relationship.

The Geopolitical Stakes: Between Commerce and Geopolitics

Trade and the War in Ukraine

Madam President, there is a direct link between the EU's trade deficit with China and the war in Ukraine. China is Russia's main economic partner since Western sanctions isolated Moscow from international financial and commercial markets. Beijing buys the Russian oil and gas that Europeans stopped importing. It provides Russia with the dual-use goods its war economy needs. It keeps alive a Russian economy that sanctions were supposed to suffocate.

By continuing to enrich Beijing at the rate of one billion euros per day, Europe is indirectly financing the economy that sustains the Russian war machine. I ask the question directly: has the EU ever precisely calculated what percentage of its additional defense spending in support of Ukraine is offset by the revenues that China draws from its trade with Europe and funnels to Russia? The answer would interest me.

Xi Jinping and the Middle Powers

In June 2026, more than a dozen world leaders traveled to Beijing to meet Xi Jinping. These visits — from new Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — are part of a deliberate strategy by Xi to reposition China as an alternative pole of attraction for the "middle powers" seeking to navigate a world where Trump's America is less predictable. This strategy works in part because of the weaknesses in the Western response.

If Europe wants to remain an attractive pole for these same middle powers — and for nations of the Global South — it must offer a credible alternative, not merely a rhetoric of values. The credibility of this alternative partly depends on demonstrating that Europe manages its own relationship with China with intelligence and firmness, rather than enduring the asymmetry without responding.

What Reciprocity Should Concretely Mean

Three Pillars of a Reciprocity Doctrine

Madam President, allow me to propose three concrete pillars for a commercial reciprocity doctrine with China. First pillar: conditional access. European public procurement, large infrastructure contracts, and tender processes in strategic sectors should be conditional on equivalent access for European companies to Chinese public markets. This simple reciprocity principle is already applied by some member states on an ad hoc basis — it should become a common policy.

Second pillar: subsidy transparency. The European Foreign Subsidies Regulation is a promising tool, but its application must be accelerated and systematized to cover all sectors where Chinese companies benefiting from state subsidies participate in European tender processes. Third pillar: active diversification. The EU must actively fund alternative supply chains for the 400 critical dependencies identified — with clear budgets, timelines, and responsibilities. This is not strategic luxury. It is national security.

What Reciprocity Is Not

Reciprocity is not blind protectionism. We are not seeking to close our markets to all Chinese goods — that would be economically irrational and diplomatically suicidal. We are seeking to correct an asymmetry that is not the result of a free market but of a system deliberately designed to favor Chinese exporters at the expense of European producers. Distinguishing fair competition from unfair competition is not economic nationalism — it is commercial common sense.

Reciprocity is also not the isolation of China. Europe needs China for global challenges — climate change, AI governance, pandemic prevention. Cutting diplomatic bridges with Beijing would be a mistake. What we are asking for is to manage the commercial relationship with the firmness its economic dimension requires, while maintaining the diplomatic channels necessary for planetary challenges.

The Political Calendar: The Window Is Closing

September 2026: The State of the Union Speech

Madam President, your State of the Union speech in September 2026 represents a major political opportunity window. This is the moment when you can announce not another study, but a clear European commercial doctrine, with priority sectors, implementation mechanisms, and a schedule. This would be a strong signal to European businesses, member states, our trading partners, and Beijing itself: Europe has decided to manage this relationship seriously.

The political timing is favorable. The European Council has given you a mandate. European public opinion is, according to available polls, broadly in favor of a firmer posture toward China. Even the business community, long opposed to any measure likely to disrupt Sino-European trade relations, is beginning to understand that the current environment is unsustainable. The political opportunity window is there. It will not remain open indefinitely.

What Will Happen If Europe Does Not Choose

If Europe does not formulate a clear reciprocity doctrine in the coming months, here is what will probably happen. The trade deficit with China will continue to increase. Additional European industrial sectors will face the unfair competition of subsidized Chinese exporters. Pressures on member states to act unilaterally will intensify, leading to a fragmentation of the European response. And China — which never lacks long-term strategists — will continue to deepen its dependencies to make them harder to dismantle.

Economic history shows that structural asymmetries do not resolve themselves. They accumulate until the breaking point — which then takes the form of a crisis rather than a planned transition. Europe still has the possibility of managing this transition in an orderly way. This possibility exists today. It will not always exist.

The Stakes for European Citizens

Industrial Jobs on the Front Line

Madam President, behind the macro-economic figures are workers. The 29 million jobs that the ECB estimates are at risk are not abstract statistics — they are factories in the Midlands closing in the face of cheaper Chinese electric vehicles, steelworks in Germany under pressure from subsidized steel, solar panel manufacturers in Spain and Italy unable to compete with Chinese prices. These are populist votes forming in those industrial valleys, ultimately eroding the pro-European coalition if European institutions do not demonstrate they defend their citizens' interests.

Europe's populism crisis is not unrelated to unmanaged globalization. The nationalist forces seeking to weaken the European project feed on the feeling that Brussels protects the interests of large corporations and free trade agreements rather than those of workers. Demonstrating that the European Union is capable of defending its commercial interests firmly and effectively is also a way of defending the European project against its internal adversaries.

The European Consumer Facing Low Prices That Hide High Costs

There is a frequent argument against commercial reciprocity measures: consumers benefit from the low prices of Chinese imports. This is true in the short term. A Chinese solar panel at €100 is cheaper than a European panel at €200. A Chinese electric vehicle at €25,000 is cheaper than its European equivalent at €40,000. But these low prices hide costs that the consumer pays differently: through the taxes that fund assistance to threatened industries, through unemployment in deindustrialized regions, and through the strategic vulnerability of an economy that has lost its capacity to produce essential goods.

The complete economic calculation — which integrates social and strategic externalities — does not tilt as clearly in favor of free trade with a China that does not play by the rules of the free market. Europe has the right — and the responsibility — to make this complete calculation and act accordingly.

Europe and China: The Dialogue That Must Happen Differently

Speaking Firmly Does Not Mean Not Speaking at All

Madam President, a commercial reciprocity doctrine must be accompanied by sustained diplomatic dialogue with Beijing. These two elements are not contradictory — they reinforce each other. China respects partners who know their interests and defend them clearly. It navigates skillfully through Western ambiguities and hesitations. A clear, consistent, and durably maintained European position is more likely to produce Chinese concessions than a vague posture that oscillates between engagement and threat.

The EU-China summit of July 2025 in Beijing, which you described as "an inflection point," showed the possibility of direct dialogue on trade imbalances. This dialogue must continue, but with measurable concrete results. "De-risking" cannot remain a concept — it must translate into mutual commitments on market access, state subsidies, and industrial property.

Coordination With Partners: G7 and Beyond

Europe must not act alone. Coordination with the United States, Japan, Canada, and other G7 members is essential to maximize the impact of reciprocity policies. The June 2026 G7 in Évian placed global economic imbalances — including the imbalance with China — on the agenda. That is a start.

But coordination with Trump's America has its own limits and risks. Under Trump, the United States also seeks to defend its own industrial interests — sometimes at the expense of European allies, as evidenced by threats of 100% tariffs on European digital taxes. Europe must build its own policy toward China, with the United States when possible, alone when necessary. European economic sovereignty cannot be outsourced to Washington.

Technological Sovereignty: The Most Urgent File

AI, Chips, and Digital Dependence

Madam President, among all the domains of dependence on China, digital technology may be the most urgent. While Beijing builds a $295-billion national AI data center grid with 80% domestic chips, Europe has no national champion in AI processors. The European Chips Act initiative, with its €43 billion, is a start — but industrial timelines mean the first factories will not be fully operational before the end of the decade.

The risk is that during this vulnerability window, the digital infrastructure of Europe is built on foundations that create dependencies difficult to dismantle. Submarine cables, network equipment, data servers: domains where supplier choices made today will have strategic consequences for ten years. The EU must apply to these sectors the same sovereignty rigor it now applies, belatedly, to energy.

Data Protection as a Sovereignty Issue

The EU established with the GDPR a personal data protection framework that is one of the most rigorous in the world. This is a legitimate source of pride. But the challenge of data sovereignty goes beyond personal data protection — it concerns the location of economic, industrial, and governmental data in infrastructures that are not controlled by actors subject to extraterritorial legislation incompatible with European law. Beijing requires that data generated in China stays there — it is time that Europe required the same for its strategic data.

The implementation of a sovereign European cloud — a project still advancing too slowly — is a condition of European digital sovereignty. Businesses and administrations that store their sensitive data in infrastructures dependent on foreign legislation create vulnerabilities that our adversaries — China and Russia leading the way — know how to exploit.

Foreign Investment Policy: When Beijing Buys What Europe Fails to Protect

Chinese Strategic Acquisitions in Europe: A Concerning Record

Madam President, allow me to cite a few figures that your departments know better than I do. Between 2015 and 2025, Chinese direct investments in Europe totaled nearly €300 billion, according to data from the Rhodium Group think tank. A significant share of these investments targeted strategic sectors: industrial robotics, semiconductors, precision medicine, artificial intelligence. These acquisitions are not ordinary financial operations. They are transfers of know-how and infrastructure toward a rival power.

The European foreign investment screening mechanism, adopted in 2019, represented real progress. But it is insufficient. It is optional for member states. It is incomplete in its sectoral definitions. And it is not retroactive. Key companies — like Kuka in Germany and Pirelli in Italy — passed under Chinese control before this mechanism even existed. The horse has bolted. The stable still does not have a solid lock.

The Progressive Withdrawal of European Industrial Capacities

Beyond direct acquisitions, the more insidious phenomenon is the progressive relocation of industrial capacities to China. The European automotive industry is the most striking example: German, French, and Italian manufacturers invested massively in China to produce locally. They trained local partners. They transferred technology. And today, these partners are becoming their competitors on third-party markets.

This is the paradox of European industrial strategy over the past twenty years: by seeking to benefit from the Chinese market, our companies contributed to creating the champions that now challenge them. BYD, CATL, Xiaomi did not arise from nowhere. They absorbed, adapted, and improved what Europe taught them.

The Chinese Governance Model as a Systemic Challenge for European Democracies

The Competition of Systems: Democracy Versus State Capitalism

Madam President, we must name clearly what is at stake. This is not only a trade war. It is a competition between two governance models. The Chinese model — state capitalism, long-term strategic planning, national resource mobilization — produced in forty years the fastest economic development in human history. This is not coincidence. It is a method.

Our democracies have their own strengths: freedom to innovate, dynamic markets, rule of law, individual creativity. But they also have their structural weaknesses in this competition: short electoral cycles, inability to plan over thirty years, decisional fragmentation among twenty-seven member states. China plays chess while we play football. Not the same time scale.

The Defense of Human Rights as a Strategic Component

Europe tends to treat the question of human rights in China as a separate issue from economic strategy. This is an analytical error. The maintenance of a workforce denied union rights, a stifled civil society, and a state-controlled press constitutes a structural competitive advantage for Chinese state capitalism. This is not a moral argument. It is political economy.

Demanding progress on human rights in trade negotiations is not an idealistic position. It is a strategic position consistent with Europe's long-term interests. An economic system based on coercion produces goods at prices that free labor cannot compete with without aligning itself with the same coercion. And that is not the Europe we want to build.

The European Path: Ambitious Industrial Policy as the Only Coherent Response

The European Industrial New Deal: Conditions for Success

What Europe needs is not a reaction. It is an industrial vision. The United States understood this with the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act. These laws signal to businesses and investors a clear and durable strategic direction. Europe needs the European equivalent: a European Chips and Science Act, an Industrial Policy Act, a Data Sovereignty Framework with genuine enforcement mechanisms.

These instruments are not protectionism. They are a symmetrical response to what China has practiced successfully for thirty years. Europe does not have to copy the Chinese model. It must create its own model of democratic organized capitalism — which reconciles market, strategic planning, and fundamental freedoms.

European Solidarity as a Sine Qua Non Condition

Madam President, none of these policies will succeed if the twenty-seven member states continue to negotiate bilaterally with Beijing. Hungary welcoming Chinese investments without transparency, Germany protecting its automotive exporters at the expense of common strategy: these national decisions undermine the collective strategy. China knows this. It uses this fragmentation as a negotiating weapon.

European strategic solidarity is not a philosophical ideal. It is a condition of economic survival. Beijing negotiates with Europe as if it were twenty-seven countries. Europe must negotiate as if it were one. This is not an ambition. It is a necessity.

The Moment of Decision, Madam President

What History Will Judge

Madam President, you have inherited a commission at a moment of truth for the European project. The war in Ukraine demonstrated that Europe can, when it chooses to, act with a unity and determination that its critics denied. The Chinese challenge is of a different nature — not an immediate military emergency, but a slow and systemic erosion that demands a sustained long-term response.

History will judge your mandate on several criteria. But on the Chinese file, it will ask this question: in June 2026, when the deficit was reaching €360 billion per year and critical dependencies had reached 400, did the European Commission formulate a clear reciprocity doctrine and the tools to apply it? Or did it produce yet another report recommending that the question be studied?

The Final Call

I will end this letter with what I hope to have made it: a call to action, not an indictment. Europe has the institutions, the resources, and the economic weight to manage its relationship with China in a way that is both firm and constructive. What it sometimes lacks is the political will to mobilize these assets in a coherent and visible manner. That will is what you have the power to embody. The €360-billion deficit is not waiting. Critical dependencies do not reduce themselves. The window for action is open. Step through it.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My biases and my method

This open letter is an exercise in engaged political rhetoric — that is the essence of the genre. I am pro-European, convinced that the European Union represents a valuable political and economic model that deserves to be defended intelligently. I am skeptical of structural trade imbalances and unmanaged strategic dependencies. These positions inform the argument.

The figures cited — €360 billion deficit, 45% increase in imports, 400 critical dependencies — are drawn from publicly verifiable sources (Eurostat, European Commission, reports from institutions such as Allianz and Bruegel). I cross-referenced them with multiple sources to ensure their consistency.

What I do not know

I do not know whether the Commission actually has a non-public sectoral de-risking plan. I do not know to what extent the political constraints of the 27 prevent the formulation of a more explicit doctrine. I do not know the details of ongoing diplomatic negotiations between the EU and China. These unknowns limit the scope of some of my criticisms — and I acknowledge this.

Sources

Primary sources

EU trade relations with China — European Commission (Eurostat) — June 24, 2026

EU recorded a record trade deficit with China of 360 billion euros — von der Leyen — UNN — June 15, 2026

EU leaders poised for battle — Euronews — June 19, 2026

Secondary sources

EU leaders stop short of China trade crackdown — Brussels Signal — June 19, 2026

EU looks to bolster trade defences as China threatens key sectors — Straits Times — May 29, 2026

Xi Jinping hosts world leaders, middle powers look beyond the US — The Guardian — June 26, 2026

Europe Trade Analysis — Allianz Economic Research — February 2026