‘Climate change in trade’: battlelines drawn on Europe’s new China strategy

As national EU leaders meet in Brussels to thrash out a possible new China policy, speculation is high as to where they all stand amid fluid member-state dynamics. In the last part of this three-part series, we look at whether the conventional wisdom will be fundamentally changed in the EU and how the bloc could forge a united front in dealing with China.Over dinner on Thursday, leaders from the European Union’s 27 member states will chew on one of their toughest courses in years: “global macroeconomic imbalances and their implications for Europe’s competitiveness and prosperity”.In Brussels-speak, this mealy-mouthed dish is shorthand for “China” – an issue so difficult to digest that bureaucrats have avoided putting it on the menu at all.