EU, China hold the key to avert a new Cold War, diplomat says

Good morning from Brussels,

Continued cooperation between China and the EU is crucial to avert a new Cold War and potentially even a global conflict, Zhu Jing, chargé d'affaires at the Chinese Mission to the EU, said on Tuesday.

“As long as China and Europe choose dialogue and cooperation… a new Cold War will not emerge, and world peace will be safeguarded,” the senior Chinese diplomat said.

In a discreet reference to the US, the diplomat described China and the EU as “two major forces advancing multipolarity”.

Euractiv’s Thomas Moller-Nielsen, who attended the event, analyses Zhu’s statements in light of the upcoming US elections, the ongoing EU-China trade dispute over electric vehicles and the overall West-China clash in the geopolitical arena.

Meanwhile, European start-ups have called the EU Commission for a new pan-European corporate entity status to survive the rising global competition with the USA, China, or India, writes Théophane Hartmann.

“In the USA, it is not uncommon that a founder from the West Coast gets funding from an investor living on the East Coast. In Europe, it is impossible that a Portuguese founder gets money from a Latvian investor,” Andreas Klinger, investor at Prototype Capital, told Euractiv.

All member states except Romania backed on Tuesday the Council conclusions proposed by the Hungarian presidency defending a "dedicated" Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) amid speculation about integrating it into the Union's cohesion policy.

On the Ukraine front, an overwhelming majority of EU lawmakers voted on Tuesday to greenlight an historic loan package of up to €35 billion, which Ukraine can repay with windfall profits from frozen Russian assets.

Meanwhile, the EU court said member states that took in non-Ukrainians who had temporary residence in Ukraine at the time of the 2022 Russian invasion could withdraw that protection. In addition, Ukraine’s prosecutor general resigned amid a draft-dodging scandal.

Regarding migration, the French Renaissance delegation is pushing back hard on the migration discourse of their own government, criticising the interior minister’s tough narrative as a contributing factor to a failing common EU migration policy.
Moreover, Italian progressives urged the Commission to start infringement procedures over the Italy-Albania deal.

BERLIN | LONDON

German and British defence ministers will sign a long-awaited agreement on closer military cooperation on Wednesday, ahead of a major bilateral treaty in January as part of Britain's rapprochement with the EU. Read more.

German supply chain law will be gone by the end of the year, Scholz promises employers. The German Supply Chain Due Diligence Law "will be gone" by the end of this year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told employers’ associations at their annual summit on Tuesday, citing his government's efforts to replace the law with an EU directive with a narrower scope. Read more.

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VIENNA

Nature restoration law: Austrian centre-right ÖVP abandons EU lawsuit. A move by Austria’s centre-right ÖVP to annul the EU’s new nature restoration law will not be filed, the party said on Tuesday, due to a lack of support from the Greens, who are co-governing the country. Read more.

LONDON

UK warns Russian strikes on Black Sea delay grain supplies to Palestinians, global south. Russia's increased attacks on the Black Sea ports in Ukraine are delaying vital aid reaching Palestinians and stopping crucial grain supplies from being delivered to the global south, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said late on Tuesday. Read more.

VILNIUS

Lithuania does not rule out Macron’s 'boots on the ground' to Ukraine. The Lithuanian president's Senior National Security Advisor, Kęstutis Budris, has not ruled out French President Emmanuel Macron’s idea of sending military instructors to Ukraine. Read more.

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STOCKHOLM
Swedish Finance minister to chair key World Bank, IMF committee. Swedish Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson will chair the joint development committee of the World Bank and the IMF until 2026. Read more.

Stoltenberg is to be knighted in Sweden. Sweden will award the Royal Order of the North Star to 10 foreign citizens, including Norwegian former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin and former Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto.

ROME

Tensions between Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government and the judiciary over the Italy-Albania migration agreement have reached a new peak, with the Council of Europe’s racism watchdog condemning the government’s behaviour for undermining the judiciary. Read more.

Italian progressives urge Commission to start infringement procedure over Italy-Albania deal. The Italian Democratic Party (S&D), M5S (The Left), and AVS (Greens and The Left) asked the European Commission on Friday if it intends to initiate an infringement procedure against Italy over its migration deal with Albania to externalise asylum procedures. Read more.

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MADRID

Spanish NGO calls EU migration policy 'structural genocide’. The European Union is committing "structural genocide" with irregular migrants, while far-right forces use the "invasion" of immigrants as an electoral weapon, Óscar Camps, founder and director of Spanish NGO Open Arms, told Euractiv.es. Read more.

PRAGUE | BRATISLAVA

In a controversial legal settlement, Slovakia's Interior Ministry has admitted that former Czech prime minister and populist opposition leader Andrej Babiš (ANO, Patriots) was wrongly registered as an agent of the communist-era secret police (StB), sparking accusations of political favouritism. Read more.
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WARSAW | BERLIN

Poles sour on Germans, historic resentment still alive, report shows. The perception Poles have of their Western neighbours is becoming increasingly negative, while Germans have an increasingly positive view of them, the latest edition of the German-Polish Barometer study by the Deutsches Polen Institut (DPI) has found. Read more.

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BUDAPEST

Hungary requests immunity revocation for MEP Ilaria Salis. Anti-fascist activist and MEP Ilaria Salis (The Left) revealed in a press release on Tuesday that Hungary had asked to revoke her parliamentary immunity. Read more.
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BRATISLAVA | BUDAPEST | BELGRADE

Fico, Orbán and Vučić call for united front against irregular migration. The leaders of Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia expressed concern that current European solutions to irregular migration are inadequate and called for greater regional cooperation to tackle the problem more effectively at a meeting in Komárno on Tuesday. Read more.
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CHISINAU

More than 400 people in Moldova got paid to vote. An investigation by the Moldovan police that is still ongoing has already revealed that over 400 Moldovans received money in exchange for votes in the presidential elections and Sunday's referendum. Read more.

SOFIA

Bulgaria subsidises coal plants with €1.3 billion. Bulgaria's state-owned Maritsa East thermal power plant has received €1.3 billion in state funding for 2019-2023 as it is kept on 'life support', the Bulgarian office of Greenpeace, which is preparing a report on the issue, has said. Read more.

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[Edited by Sarantis Michalopoulos, Daniel Eck, Alice Taylor-Braçe]