Europe won't 'pick sides'
The EU’s industry commissioner said Europe won’t simply follow the U.S. in its approach to China, emphasizing the bloc’s need for foreign investment rather than a binary choice between Washington and Beijing. That stance sits against a stark trade picture: in 2025 the EU ran a €359.8bn goods deficit with China after exports fell 6.5% and imports rose 6.4%, underscoring why policymakers want access to Chinese capital even as strategic tensions grow. (politico.eu) (ec.europa.eu)
Europe’s top industry official just said the quiet part out loud: the European Union does not want to copy Washington’s hard-line China policy, because Brussels still wants Chinese money flowing into European factories. On April 10, 2026, Industry Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné said at Politico’s European Pulse Forum in Barcelona that Europe “need[s]” foreign investment and sees “a path forward” for Chinese investment inside the bloc. That sounds softer than the United States line because it is softer. The Trump administration has pushed allies to reduce dependence on China faster, while Brussels is trying to protect sensitive sectors without shutting the door on outside capital altogether. The trade numbers show why this is such an awkward balancing act. In 2025, the European Union sold €199.6 billion in goods to China and bought €559.4 billion, leaving a €359.8 billion goods deficit. The direction of travel got worse, not better. Compared with 2024, European Union exports to China fell 6.5 percent while imports from China rose 6.4 percent. This is not a one-year blip. Since 2015, European Union exports to China are up 37.1 percent, but imports are up 89.0 percent, which means the gap has widened much faster than Europe’s sales into the Chinese market. So Europe is trying to do two things at once that pull in opposite directions: keep Chinese investment available for struggling industries, while also reducing the risk that Chinese firms dominate the same industries from inside Europe. That tension is already showing up in Brussels policy. Séjourné’s proposed Industrial Accelerator Act has been described as a plan that would favor “trusted partners” and place tighter conditions on foreign companies, including Chinese firms, even as he argues Europe still needs investment. France has been pushing this logic for months. In December 2025, President Emmanuel Macron said European industry faced a “life or death” moment between a protectionist United States and an ultra-competitive China, and argued that Chinese companies should invest in Europe the way European companies once invested in China. The result is a very European position: not the American strategy of picking one camp, and not the old free-trade strategy of pretending politics does not matter. Brussels wants Chinese capital, European control, and fewer strategic surprises, all at the same time.
