EU will help Lithuanian companies in the face of China’s coercive measures in the Taiwan case

The European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, indicated that resources will be mobilized to help Lithuanian companies that are suffering from coercive measures by China, which prevents them from accessing its market in retaliation for the recognition given to Taiwan.

Breton, who attended an informal council of EU ministers responsible for competitiveness in the French city of Lens, explained that he will travel to Lithuania to assess the situation, as well as the “inappropriate economic impact” and the consequences for the Union.

“When a country of the European Union (EU) is subjected to coercive measures, the whole of the EU is attacked” and when a Member State receives “hybrid threats, the whole EU is threatened“, he claimed.

The commissioner acknowledged that bilateral efforts have not produced results in this case and now the European media must be mobilized and “put diplomatic weight” on the table.

He also recalled that on January 27, the EU brought the dispute over trade practices before the World Trade Organization (WTO).discriminatoryagainst Lithuania.

According to the Brussels analysis, China’s behavior harms not only Lithuanian companies, but also others from different EU countries that export to China with Lithuanian content.

The dispute between China and Lithuania began in the wake of Vilnius’ decision to allow the opening of a Taiwanese representative office in his country.

Beijing, which rejects the use of Taiwan in those offices and demands that Taipei be used, responded in November by lowering the official rank of the Baltic country’s diplomatic staff in the Asian country to charge d’affaires.

Furthermore, Chinese customs are not processing Lithuanian exports, and new import requests from the Baltic country are being rejected by Beijing. Faced with that decision, Lithuania decided to withdraw its diplomats from China.

To deal with these cases in the future, the European Commission (EC) adopted last December a proposal to create an instrument that would give the EU more possibilities to react in case of economic coercion and that is currently in the negotiation phase by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU.