Vestager says probes into Chinese firms are not a message to Beijing

The EU’s recent spate of investigations into Chinese firms’ state subsidies and procurement practices is not meant to send a message to Beijing but rather shows that the Commission will protect the interests of European businesses, the bloc’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager said on Friday (26 April).

“The message we want to send is not a message to China [about] not being able to do business in Europe. [It’s] a message to European businesses to say: ‘We have your back,’” Vestager told Euractiv on the sidelines of an event in Brussels organised by the Belgian government.

“We ask for fair competition of you. So if we find that there is a risk that someone competes unfairly against you, we will do what we can in order to not only investigate, but also to take that investigation to a decision.”

Trade tensions between Brussels and Beijing have increased over the recent weeks on the back of the Commission launching its first probes under the international procurement and foreign subsidies frameworks.

On Wednesday, the EU executive announced an investigation into Chinese public procurement discrimination against European medical device suppliers. The investigation will be conducted under the bloc’s International Procurement Instrument (IPI). It is the first time that the IPI, which entered into force in 2022, has ever been invoked.

The announcement followed a raid on Tuesday by European officials on the Warsaw and Rotterdam offices of Chinese security equipment firm Nuctech, suspected of unlawfully benefiting from state subsidies.

Last month, Chinese train manufacturer CRRC Qingdao Sifang withdrew from a Bulgarian public tender after the Commission opened an anti-subsidy probe in February.

The Nuctech inspection and the Chinese train probe represented the first time that the Commission had exercised its relevant powers under the EU’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR), which came into effect in July last year.

The FSR has also been cited by the EU’s executive body on two other occasions this month: the first as part of a probe into Beijing’s support for wind turbine suppliers to Spain, Greece, France, Romania and Bulgaria; the second in an investigation into two Chinese firms suspected of undercutting local solar panel manufacturers in Romania.

Such announcements follow another Commission inquiry announced in September last year, not carried out under the auspices of the FSR, into Chinese state support for electric vehicle production.

In January, China also opened an anti-dumping investigation into imports of EU brandy.

[Edited by Anna Brunetti/Zoran Radosavljevic]

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