Taiwan is critically important to the EU, Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger said on Saturday.
Heger made the comment in an interview with the News Agency of the Slovak Republic following an EU summit in Brussels, where EU leaders on Friday had a “strategic discussion” on their economic reliance on China.
Mindful of the gas dependency built up with Russia that Moscow has exploited, many EU leaders agreed they need a united and tougher stance toward China.
Photo: AP
Asked whether that stance includes protecting Taiwan in a conflict with Beijing, Heger said that Taiwan is crucial to the EU, as 80 percent of the semiconductor chips used in its manufacturing sector come from Taiwan.
The EU “has to support Taiwan to protect the industries built on chips and artificial intelligence,” such as automotive manufacturing in Slovakia, he said.
For Slovakia, it must stand on Taiwan’s side “not only in terms of geopolitics, but also of the whole economy of the developed world,” he added.
Photo: AP
Since 2019, the EU has officially regarded China as a partner, an economic competitor and systemic rival.
The EU’s foreign policy service said in a paper prepared for the leaders’ summit that Beijing should be thought of primarily as a competitor that is promoting “an alternative vision of the world order.”
The push for fine-tuning comes as Germany’s ruling coalition considers whether to let Chinese state-owned shipping group Cosco Shipping Holdings (中遠海運控股) purchase a stake in a Hamburg port terminal.
The response of the government, currently divided on the issue, is seen as a gauge of how far it is willing to toughen its stance toward its top trading partner.
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said leaders did not discuss the Hamburg terminal, but did talk about critical infrastructure, adding this should not be sold to authoritarian regimes.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the EU had made “strategic errors” in the past with the sale of infrastructure to China.
The shift comes amid concern by EU diplomats that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is setting China on an increasingly authoritarian path.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc had learned its lesson from dependency on Russia and needs to be vigilant toward China.
“In the case of China, it is the risk of dependency on technologies and raw materials,” she said, adding that the EU needed to boost its production capacity and shift toward trustworthy suppliers.
Marin said the EU needs to avoid building future dependencies in new technology and instead promote stronger cooperation between democratic countries.
There is also concern about China’s stance on the war in Ukraine, after Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “no limits” friendship between their two countries on the eve of Russia’s invasion.
Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said it was important for the EU to speak with China to ensure it was “on the right side of history” over Russia’s war against Ukraine.
“China is best dealt with when we are 27, not when we are one on one vis-a-vis China,” he said.
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