BusinessEurope addressed a letter to EC Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, noting China’s actions towards Lithuanian business. The European business community expresses its solidarity with companies suffering the consequences of economic coercion and stands ready to play its role to help achieve a productive outcome.
The European business community is very concerned about the economically coercive measures that the People’s Republic of China took against Lithuania. The measures are negatively impacting Lithuanian companies and their business operations and have recently spilled over along the supply chains of companies from other European countries, thereby calling into question the integrity of the European Single Market. BusinessEurope is against any form of economic coercion as these actions have primarily a negative impact on companies and workers.
BusinessEurope fully support the European Commission’s efforts to tackle the current challenges as announced by Vice-President Borrell on 8 December. All countries need to respect their international commitments, including under the WTO, and appropriate actions need to be taken to address any infringements.
European business welcome an open dialogue with China to try to find constructive solutions. Any further escalation will inevitably have a negative impact on broader EU-China relations and must be avoided. At the same time, the current situation makes the case for an EU anti-coercion instrument that can be used as a dissuasion tool if similar situations arise in the future.
“The support of our partners is very important to us. We hope to see more concrete steps from the EC and our partners in the near future. We must not forget that we operate and live in one economic area and in the single market, which means that the influence and consequences of these Chinese pressure measures will be felt in the near future by the entire EU market”, – emphasizes Vidmantas Janulevičius, President of LPK.
