China puts pressure on the EU: no more visas for Taiwanese officials for the sake of bilateral relations

Brussels – There are not two Chinas, there is only one China and Taiwan is part of it. Failure to recognise this amounts to questioning not only the internal affairs of the People’s Republic but also bilateral relations. With this assumption, Beijing is exerting new pressure on the European Union to stop recognising and supporting Taipei. China’s new political and diplomatic offensive finds its legal basis in the  Schengen Borders Code, the regulation governing entry and movement within the EU.

 China invokes Article 6(1)(E) of the Regulation, which governs the entry of third-country nationals into the European Union. The list of conditions that must be met in order to enter and move freely also includes “not being considered a threat to public policy, internal security, public health or the international relations of any of the Member States, in particular not being reported for the purposes of refusing entry in the national databases of the Member States for the same reasons.” Beijing is now leveraging this reference to damage to international relations: hosting Taiwanese citizens conflicts with Beijing’s interests and good bilateral relations, first and foremost between China and Taiwan, and secondarily between the EU and China. 

Chinese officials have therefore launched a diplomatic offensive on EU embassies in Beijing to deliver a very clear message: Taiwanese public officials should not be granted visas. This is the One China policy being reintroduced in a whole new light, aimed at reaffirming Taiwan’s dependence on the People’s Republic, which is determined to undermine the European Union’s policy of viewing the island of Formosa as a separate entity from the People’s Republic.

The EU’s position alongside and in support of Taiwan has always been the subject of tensions with Beijing, which does not even approve of Brussels’ interest in forging even deeper relations with the Taipei government, as requested by the European Parliament. Now, however, everything is changing, partly because the EU has discovered that it needs Xi Jinping’s China as an alternative to Donald Trump’s United States, especially in commercial terms, with Beijing beginning to present the bill for this request for friendship. 

According to the Guardian‘s reconstruction, European diplomatic missions had already been warned in November and December. For all of them—Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, and the Czech Republic—the suggestion would be, in the broader interest of China-EU relations and bilateral relations, to take the political decision to refuse entry to the so-called president or vice-president of Taiwan.