EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Sefcovic will be in Beijing on October 8 and 9 to co-chair the EU-China Trade and Investment Council session and meet Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, in what Brussels set in June as the deadline for the first tangible results from its dialogue with Beijing. The European Commission confirmed the agenda: Chinese exports to the EU, European market access, and restrictions on rare-earth supplies.
Sefcovic has been blunt about the stakes. He told Euronews that without concrete results there would be “a strong political movement to push for harsher measures” and that if he had nothing to show, EU leaders — who meet in Brussels on October 15 and 16 — would look for solutions “through other instruments.” The EU’s goods trade deficit with China runs at roughly €1 billion a day.
Beijing’s answer came before he landed: China opened a new anti-dumping probe into the EU, a classic pre-negotiation pressure instrument, and warned it would respond firmly to any new EU restrictions on Chinese companies or products. The rare-earth truce — Beijing’s one-year suspension of its October 2025 export controls — expires November 10, 36 days out. August export data show it was already a rationed truce: volumes 18.2 percent below year-ago, value per ton up 72.7 percent.