In a sign of worsening relations between China and the European Union. The European Parliament on Thursday halted the ratification of a new investment park with china.
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Until Beijing lifted sanctions on EU politicians the EU china comprehensive agreement on investment agreed by negotiators in December last year came about after seven years of talks it aimed to put EU companies on an equal footing in china and cement.
Beijing's status as a trusted trading partner but relations between the two soured after the EU imposed sanctions on Chinese officials accused of the mass detentions of Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang province Beijing reacted and in a tit-for-tat move imposed sanctions on 10 EU politicians.
As well as think tanks and diplomatic bodies china's sanctions include five members of the EU assembly and it's human rights subcommittee EU lawmakers say the Chinese sanctions are not based on international law. While the bloc's measures like those of Britain and the united states taco abusers of human rights upheld in the un treaties parliament state that EU-china relations will not continue as usual until china lifts the sanctions.
Beijing denies any wrongdoing and in response to the revolution china's mission to the EU said that the investment agreement was mutually beneficial and not a favor from one side or the other the impasse is a setback for both china and the EU ratification of the part would have allowed greater protection of European investment and intellectual property rights in china activists and human rights experts say at least one million Muslims have detained incomes in Xinjiang china has denied any rights abuses in Xinjiang and says its camps provide vocational trading and are needed to fight extremism for more on the story.
One of the mp sorry one of the MEPs who uh who said about this commented that china had miscalculated and shot itself in the foot here because this was a deal which took indeed as he said seven years to a range and then only in a few months was potentially jeopardized now this is not the final word.
MEPs have blocked this saying that the only way they will agree to this deal is if china releases those sanctions on the European MEPs and other European institutions that though was already something being uh considered in the meantime the European Commission still needs to do the legal work the translation of the documents so this deal would not have been satisfied yet anyway.
So the hope from the European Commission and the Beijing ministry of foreign affairs is that in the meantime this can be resolved and there won't be any long-term delays to the deal which would indeed bring benefits to both Europe and China was instigated by the European Union because it perceived fairness between the investment situation for European businesses in China and yet uh china couldn't do the same in Europe so that unfairness still exists.
MEPs taking this very personally when it was their members that were sanctioned for making these claims on human rights abuses in Xinjiang uh china reacted almost in a tit-for-tat response by then
The European map is also being blocked so at the moment it seems like mostly a dispute between the parliament and china less between the commission and china which doesn't mean there is potential here for some agreement to be found but at the moment.
Certainly in the next few months, that's looking very unlikely 30 of 599 votes in the European parliament were in favor of opening up trade relationships maybe you can help us understand why exactly some who are keen to get trading started with china again well yeah 599 MEPs there couldn't have been many more that wanted to block this the difficulty is that parliament sees it as a personal attack against them even.
The people in the parliament are free or freer than the countries uh to say how they feel about the situation in China and many of them went ahead and did that which china took offense to but indeed this investment deal is important it would allow businesses uh to be able to invest in china which they can't currently do at the moment one other part of this uh deal though is that one of the things Mep has agreed as part of blocking this ratification is that looking towards us to take a tougher line on China and also want to ensure that any trade potential trade deal with Taiwan isn't affected by this china trade deal so it's not just about blocking it's also sending a signal to China that the MEPs and the parliament won't be bullied when they decide to make decisions such as sanctioning Chinese officials so what is the current state of diplomatic or trade relationships that China has with Europe well as things stand it's a bit divided because the way the European Union works
The commission and the parliament are separate even though technically representing the larger uh the larger bulk of the EU and so you might say right now china's relations with the European commission are quite good they're both on the same page and that both of these institutions want this trade deal to go ahead they both believe it's mutually beneficial the parliament though taking a stand and saying not but in general if we look to certain.
EU member states like Germany it's not good either because Germany is uh looking at some sort of scheme where businesses would not be able to invest in Xinjiang would not be able to take labor or products from Xinjiang for these same reasons the accusations of human rights abuses on a huge the scale being taken in China.
The policy that Germany proposes goes through German companies would not be able to take products from Xinjiang and there are also calls by the European parliament to extend that to some sort of European-wide scheme so the whole of the EU would not be able to accept products or work uh or do business with Xinjiang.
