(Finance) – The executive vice president of the European Commission, Valdis Dombrovskis, declared that the European executive is evaluating the possibility of establishing “a specific instrument of ‘screening’ of the investments leaving the EU”, in addition to the already existing one for investments from third countries within the Union. “But the economic security it must not become a pretext for mercantilism and protectionism,” he added in a debate at the Brussels Economic Forum.
The new screening system, with possible restrictions on European investments out to third countries, was recently announced by the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyenabout some sectors (basically security, defense, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence) in particular with regard to the “risk reduction” strategy in trade relations with China.
Speaking of China, Dombrovskis added: “let’s not talk about decoupling, But say derisking, or better risk management. We speak, for example, of avoiding certain developments, such as in the sector of Rare lands where China clearly has a dominant position. What we want to develop is a non-dependency strategy, we want to diversify and make our supply chain resilient. This is what we want to achieve with our strategy on critical raw materials, but also more broadly through partnerships with reliable partners in other parts of the world”.
“With the China – continued the vice-president of the Commission – we still have a very important commercial relationship: it is our second major commercial partner. But we also know that this relationship is asymmetrical, that there are still many problems that need to be addressed for European companies to access the” Chinese market. “Recently the Chinese minister Wang Yi”, responsible for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, “he visited Brussels and we talked about it. We need this supply chain diversification and resilience to not have these dependencies,” Dombrovskis concluded. The debate was then interrupted by some activists who took to the stage with a banner in English that read “growth kills”.