“China’s influence on eurozone increases”, ECB experts warned

Brussels – A lot of China in Europe and the eurozone is becoming increasingly Beijing-dependent. The European Central Bank analyses the economic weight of the People’s Republic globally and its influence across borders. The results of the analysis conducted in the occasional paper are crystal clear. While the United States remains exposed but is reducing its dependence on the Asian country, the opposite is true for EU countries with the single currency. The Eurozone’s exposure to China is increasing.

Data in hand, the ECB notes that China’s share of euro area imports has increased by 3 percentage points since 2016, while its share in US imports has declined by 11 percentage points. In addition, since 2022, the euro area has had greater exposure to China than the United States. 

There is more: the EU needs what it does not have and can currently find in the Chinese market. Not only is China the main sourcing country for 33 strategic goods imported from the euro area, including rare earth, lithium, tungsten, copper, and chromium, but it also “has over 50 percent of the euro area’s import market for 75 percent of these products.”

There is nothing new with the fact that Europe has become too ‘controlled’ by Beijing from an economic point of view. For years, the single, open market has allowed Chinese companies to occupy strategic posts such as ports, raising concerns in the European Parliament about security. Based on the data collected by the ECB, it is evident how Europeans failed to reverse the trend and have even continued to move further into the arms of the People’s Republic.

The latter is a problem also from the perspective of trans-Atlantic relations. The United States now considers China its main geo-political competitor, and a European rapprochement with Beijing risks compromising relations with Washington, especially if the winner of next week’s elections is Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate troubling Brussels and other capitals.

Therefore, the situation for the EU and the countries with the single currency is unchanged. China is too prominent on the economic agenda, more and more so. This leads to a series of implications for relations with the United States and the aspirations of strategic autonomy that still seem missing.