In this special edition of the Guanxi Dialogues, Vice-Head of the Communications Team for the Newsletter Francesco Palma sat down with the Vice-President of the European Parliament, Javi López (Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, S&D), for a wide-ranging conversation on the European Union’s strategic position towards China, the Latin America-China-EU triangle and the political future of the relationship. We are deeply grateful to Vice-President López for his generosity with his time and for the candour of his reflections.
You began your political career representing a single district of Barcelona and you are now Vice-President of one of the world’s largest democratic assemblies. What did that municipal experience give you that a decade inside the European Parliament still cannot?
Vice-President López: That is a really good question. My time in local politics, especially working in a district of Barcelona and in the Barcelona city council, was a great lesson in how important proximity is, and in how global trends materialise on concrete and real streets in our big cities.
It was also a personal lesson. Proximity, and how global trends impact real lives. And the great asset of local politics, compared to European politics, is that you can see your decisions and your work in concrete terms, not in abstract ones. That is really satisfying, I would say.
The Party of European Socialists (PES) and the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) have historically approached sovereignty and economic security with more caution than the right. You are now making the case for strategic autonomy from within that tradition. Where do you still meet genuine resistance, and what is the hardest part of that argument to make?
Vice-President López: I think that in our political family, strategic autonomy is now a matter of consensus. The reality is that we have seen and learned how interdependencies can be weaponised in today’s world: our dependency on security, our dependency on energy, the use of information to manipulate our public opinion. We have to be more in charge of our destiny, given that some of our traditional allies are not acting like allies anymore. We have to take full charge of our destiny. That means having capacities in security, in industrial and economic fields, in the protection of democracy and in energy: enough to navigate the troubles of the current world.
Looking at the current moment, with the United States stepping back from its past positions in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), do you carry a different ambition as a socialist than as a Vice-President, or are the two positions the same?
Vice-President López: I think we have a strong consensus around this. Washington has been extremely explicit in the last year, with the current administration, about its security umbrella and about the fact that Europe has to take charge of its own security. That has been clear. At the same time, the political will of Europeans, both in this house and in the other European institutions, around developing our own defence capacities, is also clear. I am proud to be Vice-President of the Parliament, to try to protect the European democratic consensus in this institution and, at the same time, to work towards strategic autonomy. We might have had doubts about this debate inside the European institutions ten years ago, but with the new geopolitical context, there is a strong consensus that we have to move in that direction.
In our previous interview, Ambassador Toledo described the difficulty of speaking to Chinese counterparts in the shadow of China’s position on Ukraine. Will you raise this issue on your forthcoming trip to China, and how central is the war to your engagement with Beijing?
Vice-President López: Yes, Ukraine is something we always raise in our conversations with external and foreign partners. I am used to working with Latin America and with China, and with both, we always bring it into the conversation, trying to explain how important the brutal and illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine is and what it means for the architecture of security in Europe, and how we perceive this illegal invasion as a general threat to our peaceful coexistence in Europe. But this is not something we explain only to our Chinese counterparts. We explain it to everybody, and we raise it in all our conversations, including with the Chinese, who have also been consistent in their position on the matter.
Turning to your expertise on Latin America: China is now the region’s second-largest trading partner, with deep investments in lithium and a growing infrastructure footprint. After five years co-chairing the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (EuroLat), has Europe left it too late to make gains there?
Vice-President López: First of all, this is extremely important for me to say: this is not a zero-sum game. We are not competing with China in Latin America, with the idea that China is gaining. We should have a cooperative relationship between Latin America, China and Europe. At the same time, what we have to ask ourselves is what we are offering and what we are doing in Latin America. The reality is that we are the strongest investor in the region. Our cultural, personal and human ties are huge; the historical ties are huge. It is true that for the last ten or fifteen years, Latin America was not at the heart of Europe’s priorities, Europe was really focusing on its neighbourhood. My perception is that, in the last three or four years, we are moving in a different direction and we are reinforcing the ties with the region, especially after the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union restarted the EU-CELAC summits. The first was three years ago, and we had another one this year in Santa Marta, in Colombia. But more importantly, we have been able, in the last year, to close association agreements: with Chile last year, and this year extremely important agreements with Mercosur and the modernisation of the Global Agreement with Mexico. Those are real game changers in the relationship between Europe and Latin America.
And then my point is that this is not a zero-sum game. The point is what we offer. We are beginning, in the last three years, a new period in the relationship between Europe and the region. The Mercosur, Mexico and Chile agreements are key to reinforcing our presence. What we provide and can provide is industry, investments, the highest environmental and social standards, and cooperation. The point is how we can work together more within the multilateral structures, in the direction of cooperation, multilateralism and a rules-based order. That is something we share with our Latin American counterparts.
Who are our strongest diplomatic allies in the region, the partners that can best help us leverage our position?
Vice-President López: The most important actors in the region are the strategic partners that have been officially qualified as such by the European Union: Mexico and Brazil.
You have called for an axis of stability grouping Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and the Latin American democracies. Beijing would almost certainly read that as containment by another name. Is that reading entirely wrong?
Vice-President López: No, because I do not believe in bipolar views of the world. Of course, China could read it as a threat, but I never try to use the Cold War framework for the current geopolitical landscape. The idea of the West against the rest is, in my view, extremely dangerous for European interests. At the same time, I firmly believe that the liberal democracies can work together on the international stage. This is something Europe especially has to recognise: the empty space that the new world created by the withdrawal of the United States is leaving behind has to be covered by anchors of stability and by defenders of the rules-based order. On that, we have to step forward and ask for more protagonism in that direction.
But I believe we can work in favour of stability, in favour of certainty, in favour of trade and economic certainty, and in favour of the reconstruction of multilateralism, with China. This is something we must do, and I do not see this as antagonising anybody. Nor as antagonising the United States, because this network that you mentioned could be seen as antagonising Beijing, but also as undermining our relations with Washington. I would describe it as relations in favour of multilateralism and of a rules-based order, which obviously has to include our relations with both Washington and Beijing.
Catalonia is the Spanish region with the highest concentration of Chinese-funded investment, nearly 1.2 billion EUR over the past five years, and has a regional trade agency actively courting more. That sits in direct tension with the European Union de-risking agenda you help shape. Is Catalonia a model of pragmatic sub-national engagement, or a vulnerability the European Union has not yet learned to address?
Vice-President López: No, first of all, I do not see any incompatibility between what Catalonia and Spain are doing and the European agenda. What we are working on is Chinese investments with conditionality, and that should be the framework Europe has on this. Investments are welcome, but at the same time, investments have to bring real positive added value and local impact: in the labour market, in productivity, in technology transfer. That is what we are doing. The interdependencies between Europe and China are there. We do not want to weaponise interdependencies. We want to work together to push in the direction of shared prosperity. That is our agenda, and that will be the European Union’s agenda.
You host a podcast, Brussels Calling, built to make institutional complexity more immediate. If you dedicated one episode entirely to China, not the policy, but the human dimension of the relationship, what would it be about?
Vice-President López: Well, it would be about trying to understand China better. I think this is a lesson, a piece of homework, for Western policymakers around the world. We should make a much stronger effort to try to understand the cultural dimension, the mindset of our Chinese counterparts, especially of a country that is one-sixth of humanity, holds thirty per cent of the world’s industrial capacities and is the first trade partner of around 120 states. I always underline, and I firmly believe, that there is no important global challenge that can be addressed without cooperation between Europe and China. Economic governance, multilateralism, climate change: for the big issues, cooperation between Europe and China is completely needed. So we have to understand each other better and make a real effort in that direction.
Cooperation always starts with understanding. European Guanxi pushes for collaboration between the two sides, but we also ask ourselves what Europe loses by cooperating, or by failing to cooperate. What would Europe stand to lose, if anything, from real cooperation with China?
Vice-President López: I do not believe in zero-sum games in the logic of the world. It depends on how you see the world. If you see cooperation as something that runs against your interests, a nationalistic view of the world, then obviously you will always see cooperation with China as a vulnerability or as a risk. But I do not see the world like that. I see that when we cooperate, if it is based on balanced and solid pillars, on the logic of reciprocity, on the logic of looking for the common interest, both sides can gain, in geopolitical terms and in economic terms. And it is not only economic, it is not only about the relationship between Europe and China. It is something between Europe and the rest of the world. If you asked me what problem cooperation between Europe and the rest of the world could pose, the answer would be nothing. Why should the answer be different if the question is between China and Europe?
There are entire sectors, automotive, parts of the energy industry, sustainability, where China is becoming more competitive and European producers may suffer. The challenge is also to find where to cooperate.
Vice-President López: That is the consequence of having had open markets for decades. Open markets have brought opportunities for European producers. Now, in some sectors, the Chinese turn out to be more productive and more competitive than us. So the question should be: how do we do our homework better? How do we improve our industrial policy, how do we work on conditionality for Chinese investments in Europe, how do we reinforce and guarantee a balanced trade relationship based on reciprocity? But I do not see it as a threat.
Relations between the European Parliament and its Chinese counterparts have been constrained, though the recent Inter-Parliamentary meeting, the first since 2018, was a positive sign. If you could ask a Chinese counterpart one question and receive a genuinely honest answer, what would it be?
Vice-President López: First of all, I have the opportunity to speak with our Chinese counterparts often. This year, we have been able to relaunch the parliamentary relations between Europe and China. We had this parliamentary dialogue first in Brussels, I was present there, and afterwards, a few weeks ago in Beijing. I was not part of that particular delegation, because I will take part in the one the Foreign Affairs Committee is organising this July. So we are having a wave of missions, dialogues, common spaces and visits with our Chinese counterparts, and I think this is good. In general terms, we can say that both sides have always had an honest and transparent dialogue. But I think it is important for us to understand better what role China wants to play in the world in the twenty-first century, because it will be an important one, given the scale and the reality that they represent.
That is there, it will not change, but we have to understand it better. And that is part of the mission of dialogue: to have more empathy, more common understanding.
One last question. You entered the European Parliament at twenty-eight and are now its Vice-President. What is the one capability you most hope Europe builds now, so that the generation navigating the EU-China relationship in 2040 is not left negotiating from weakness?
Vice-President López: In my view, our sin, what we have to improve as Europeans, is one we usually carry in our external action and in our external relations: we tend to combine, at the same time, arrogance and naivety. To be arrogant and to be naive. And what I would kindly recommend to the future generations of European representatives is that our relationship with the rest of the world should be a little less arrogant, with fewer lectures, but at the same time more mature, less naive. I think that is a good lesson for the next generations.
That resonates with something a Chinese think tank speaker recently said: that Europeans hold strong positions but arrive with a touch of their own bubble, believing they can export it everywhere.
Vice-President López: And that should not be to the detriment of believing, and I do believe, in the universal values that we represent as sons and daughters of the Enlightenment. I believe in those universal values, and I think we try to represent them. But it could be done with more modesty.
Absolutely. Thank you very much, Vice-President López, for your time and for the candour of your answers.