Europe’s relations with China are going from bad to worse.
Beijing’s decision to force national security laws on Hong Kong has outraged many in the European Union for what they see as an attack on democracy. It places EU governments on the horns of a dilemma over how to respond as they shift from battling the coronavirus to economic recovery, where trade with China is likely to play a big part.
That is set to leave Europe somewhere in the middle as the U.S. weighs a range of penalties on China for encroaching further on Hong Kong’s freedoms. The EU’s chief foreign envoy, Josep Borrell, said this week that sanctions were not the solution "to our problems with China.” In a letter to the bloc’s foreign ministers ahead of a scheduled video conference meeting on China on Friday, he urged them to consider "the tools of leverage we have.”