EU expected to seek Asian support for trade, climate

THE EU was expected to seek Asian support for free trade, the Iran nuclear deal and combating global warming at a regional summit yesterday that includes China, Japan and Russia as a counterbalance to a more protectionist US.

Leaders from the EU, Switzerland and Norway will welcome 21 Asian counterparts, including China’s Premier Li Keqiang, after an EU summit dominated by negotiations over Britain’s departure from the world’s biggest trading bloc.

The 51 gathered leaders are set to show “strong support” for the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that US President Donald Trump had threatened to quit, and express “profound alarm” about climate change, according to a draft communique seen by Reuters.

Leaders representing 55% of global trade will underline “their joint commitment to open, free and non-discriminatory trade” and “to fight all forms of protectionism”, according to the draft.

Trump says the US is treated badly in global trade and has blamed the WTO for allowing that to happen.

“This is a message that the EU is more than Brexit, and that Europe has friends beyond Washington,” said a senior EU official involved in preparing the summit, which has taken place every two years since 1996.

Today, the EU will sign a free-trade deal with Singapore. The bloc is also pushing for approval for another freetrade agreement with Vietnam.

However, the EU is trying not to side with China against the US.

China, which produces and consumes half the world’s steel and, has cut some 220 million tons of capacity since January 2016. But the EU remains intent on pressuring China to cut more, as well as to remove subsidies – a policy that the West says is aimed at dominating global markets.

Bolstering the Iran nuclear deal signed by global powers in 2016, and that Trump has withdrawn from, is also another priority of the summit.

Leaders will call on North Korea to “completely, verifiably and irreversibly dismantle all its nuclear and weapons of mass destruction”, according to the draft final statement.

Another sensitive issue is wording in the final communique on cyber attacks and stopping computer hackers.