Juncker Keqiang
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the end of the EU-China summit in Brussels. Photo: EPA-EFE
The European Union has set up a new mechanism in order to monitor implementation of China's agreed commitments, with an eye to using it as a template for monitoring other bilateral agreements.
According to a report by EURACTIV, the 28 national EU governments have told their ambassadors in Brussels to "actively monitor" the progress of China's implementation of its commitments to opening up its economy and reforming the WTO.
The process is a response to concerns among some in the bloc that Beijing will fall short in terms of delivering on its commitments, as it has done in the past.
The EU and China signed a joint statement in following a summit Brussels last month which reaffirmed multilateralism and committed China to opening up its markets to foreign investments.
The joint statement also established "a political mechanism to continuously monitor the progress in the negotiations and to report to leaders by the end of the year on the progress made.”
Monitoring will be undertaken by a permanent grouping of EU national ambassadors, the Committee of Permanent Representatives, or Coreper. It will "demonstrate to the Chinese partners that the EU takes the implementation of the summit seriously.”
Coreper has asked the European Commission, at the presentation of the first post-summit report, to inform them of any obstacles in the process with China going forward.
China is be the test case for the monitoring process. It is also expected that the EU will begin a similar process for the EU-Japan summit, also held last month, which came in the wake of the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, which in effect created the world's largest free-trade zone.
While the monitoring measures achieved a broad consensus during the meeting of ambassadors, with Germany being the most enthusiastic, there was some disagreement when it came to choosing the priorities of how to focus the monitoring. Some countries, such as Sweden and Belgium, wanted to focus on human rights. Others, such as France, Germany, the UK, Ireland and Czech Republic wanted the priority to be trade. There was also a large amount of support for the focus to be on reform of the World Trade Organization, a key objective of the EU.
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