BERLIN — The European Commission needs the power to act much faster against trade threats, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron urged in a joint letter on Monday. In the letter — which was accompanied by a joint position paper — the two leaders said the EU faced unprecedented challenges. While the letter doesn’t mention China by name, it is clearly related to the bloc’s €1-billion-a-day trade deficit with the world’s leading exporter.
It calls for urgent action, saying the EU’s existing trade defense toolbox “does not suffice anymore.” “Without delaying the full use of the existing set of instruments, we need a comprehensive framework to complement our toolbox with new legal instruments — in a lean and non-bureaucratic way,” they wrote. The leaders of the EU’s two largest economies want a new tool that would empower Brussels to exclude imports from certain countries. The proposal arrives before Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič flies to Beijing for talks on Thursday, the final round of a four-month process in which Brussels hopes to rebalance its trading relationship with China.
The Anti-Coercion Instrument, also known as the EU’s trade “bazooka,” in theory gives the Commission enormous powers to restrict imports in response to actions that are considered economic coercion. But in practice, activating it would require months of investigation and the support of a qualified majority of EU governments. Divisions among capitals have previously complicated efforts to agree on trade measures targeting China.
The new instrument would make it much harder for member countries to block swift action. Commission measures would stand unless a “reverse” qualified majority of countries voted to block them, a senior German official explained. France and Germany want “a tool that doesn’t yet exist — and doesn’t even have a name — but which is intended, so to speak, to ensure that we have a level playing field,” said the German official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, describing the tool as a “second-strike weapon.” The document is part of broader Franco-German negotiations on the EU’s top economic files.
The talks were launched by Macron and Merz after a joint ministerial meeting in Cologne in July, when the two leaders said they were converging on a more aggressive stance toward China. EU leaders will discuss the outcome of Šefčovič’s China trade talks at a summit in Brussels next week.
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