Taking Stock of the European Parliamentary Elections for the Future of EU-China Relations
In 2024, from June 6 to June 9, European voters went to the polls to elect their parliamentary representatives. The European Parliament (EP) elections, which are held every five years, saw voters across the EU’s twenty-seven member states elect 720 representatives. The turnout, at just over 51 percent of the 357 million European citizens eligible to vote in the election, was the highest in thirty years. Much of the pre-election focus was on the expected “far-right surge.” While far-right parties did perform well in several member states, notably France and Germany, and the far-right increased its representation overall, the “surge” that many predicted failed to materialize. Instead, the mainstream party groups maintained their slim majority. The largest bloc, the center-right European Peoples’ Party (EPP), increased its seat share from 176 to 189, just over 26 percent of the total. The three mainstream groupings—the EPP, the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), and the centrist Renew—together command 56 percent of seats in the legislature, which is only a slight drop from the 59 percent of seats they controlled after the last poll in 2019. Most of the decline came from Renew, which lost several seats following a large drop in support for French president Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance group, falling from the third largest to the fifth largest bloc as a result. Overall, it was a strong result in favor of Ursula von der Leyen, the incumbent Commission president who is seeking a second term as the EPP’s candidate. Meanwhile, there has been significant post-election movement on the right of the EP, with the disintegration of the Identity and Democracy (ID) group and the formation of a new bloc, Patriots for Europe, spearheaded by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and incorporating many former ID parties, including Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, Italy’s Lega, Austria’s Freedom Party, and the Dutch Party for Freedom.
Long dismissed as “second order” elections, of little consequence to Europeans let alone anyone else, the EP elections will play a key role in shaping the EU’s trajectory over the coming years, including in foreign policy. This commentary will focus on the impact of the elections—and of the party political and institutional configurations to which they will give rise—on the EU’s relationship with China. The next section gives an overview of the EU-China relationship, highlighting key areas of tension. This is followed by a discussion of the role of the Parliament and the likely implications of the election.
European perspectives on EU-China relations
In March 2019, in a report entitled EU-China – A strategic outlook, the Commission, then headed by Jean-Claude Juncker, gave China a tripartite classification. China was described as simultaneously “a cooperation partner with whom the EU has closely aligned objectives, a negotiating partner with whom the EU needs to find a balance of interests, an economic competitor in the pursuit of technological leadership, and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance” (European Commission 2019). Five years later, the triptych of “partner, competitor, rival” still holds true, though it is the more challenging aspects of the relationship that have come to the fore recently, and especially since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Although China’s close alignment with Vladimir Putin’s Russia has stopped short of open support for the war, it has underscored the determination of Xi Jinping’s China to craft its own normative and material alternative to a US-led global order. What Europeans see as China’s “pro-Russian neutrality” (Grant 2024) on Ukraine has undermined their confidence in Beijing’s willingness to play a constructive role in maintaining international peace and stability. For its part, China insists that it is contributing to precisely that goal, unlike those nations that are arming Ukraine.
As it has expanded its sanctions on Moscow, the EU has also cracked down on third-country companies that are circumventing these sanctions by exporting European-made dual use goods to Russia. As part of the 13th sanctions package, adopted in February 2024, Brussels added three mainland Chinese firms and one Hong Kong-based firm to its blacklist, meaning that EU entities are restricted in dealing with them. The package was not vetoed by Hungary, arguably the most pro-China EU state, though the government in Budapest did express its disagreement (Lau 2024). The restrictions provoked an angry response in Beijing, which had warned the EU against targeting Chinese companies. And while the US has pushed the EU to take China’s indirect support of Russia more seriously, Brussels’ concerns are its own. Thus, to the extent that Chinese officials believe that EU policy is dictated by Washington, they underestimate the scale of the affront that an illegal war of conquest on Europe’s eastern flank poses to Europe’s core values as well as to its security.
The hardening position of the Commission towards China extends beyond geopolitics. Trade imbalances and technological competition were flagged as areas of concern in the 2019 report, and they continue to be so. Electric vehicles (EVs) have emerged as a point of contention in EU-China relations. Here, there is clear tension between China as cooperation partner and China as economic competitor. Cheap Chinese green technology is vital to the success of Europe’s green transition. At the same time, China’s competitive advantages in these industries, bolstered by state subsidies and an overcapacity driven by low domestic demand, make it difficult for European firms to gain a foothold in the market.
The most recent development on this front was the Commission’s announcement, on June 12, of its decision to begin imposing tariffs of 17-38 percent (on top of a pre-existing 10 percent tariff) on Chinese EV imports. The tariff decision followed an investigation initiated last October into competition-distorting state subsidies in the EV sector. The tariffs are provisional and will need to be confirmed by a vote in the Council of Ministers by November. Support for the measures is not universal in Europe’s capitals. The initial investigation, as well as the decision to impose tariffs, was supported by member states such as France and Spain, which are seeking greater protection for their domestic EV industries. However, the tariffs are opposed by Germany, the EU’s largest member state, as well as by Sweden and Hungary. Berlin, in particular, lobbied the Commission in the lead up to the tariff announcement, arguing that imposing additional barriers to Chinese EV imports risks inviting damaging retaliatory measures. German car manufacturers continue to export significant numbers of luxury cars to the Chinese market, making them particularly vulnerable to tit-for-tat tariffs (Lahiri 2024). More generally, German chancellor Olaf Scholz, who visited Beijing in April, continues to advocate a Wandel durch Handel approach to EU-China relations, in contrast to those who emphasize “de-risking.”
What does the European Parliament have to do with EU-China relations? What impact are the elections likely to have?
The importance of EU-China relations to both parties is obvious. What is less clear is where the European Parliament fits into that relationship. Foreign policy-making in the EU is a complex mix of the intergovernmental and the supranational. As Noah Barkin (2023) put it, “[t]he days when one could neatly assign responsibility for trade and monetary policy to EU bodies while leaving foreign and security policy to the member states are coming to an end.” While the key actors in the foreign policy space are national governments—acting independently as well as collectively through the Council—and the Commission, the Parliament also matters. It exerts its influence through both direct and indirect means.
Let us start with indirect influence. To the extent that the EP elections determine the composition of the Commission, they also help to shape foreign policy priorities. To be sure, it is the European Council that nominates candidates for Commission president. However, any prospective candidate must be confirmed by a majority of MEPs. As the parliament becomes more fragmented, this task becomes more complicated. In 2024, von der Leyen starts in a reasonably strong position, as the lead candidate of the election-winning EPP. She will likely also have the support of the second and fifth largest blocs, the S&D group and Renew. However, since individual MEPs may not vote according to the group position, von der Leyen will also need to win votes from other parties.This will require some finessing on her part, as she will need to gesture towards both the left (e.g., the Greens) and the right (e.g., the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists, or ECR). In particular, von der Leyen has been courting Brothers of Italy, the party of Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni and the largest party in the ECR bloc. Should von der Leyen secure a second term as president, it is likely that the Commission will continue to take a tough line towards China on both economic and security matters.
Then there is the direct influence of the Parliament in its capacity as co-legislator. This is most clearly illustrated in relation to trade. In 2021, it was the Parliament that killed—or at least put into a deep coma—the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), when it voted to freeze ratification. The CAI had been agreed in principle by Chinese and EU leaders in December 2020 and was the culmination of a process that began in 2012. Yet, it will never be put into effect unless the Parliament agrees to reopen the ratification process. Notably, the rejection of the treaty in May 2021 was motivated, in large part, by objections specific to the Parliament itself. Namely, the Parliament was reacting to China’s sanctioning of several MEPs in retaliation for EU sanctions on a number of Chinese officials (Banks 2021). Thus, the Parliament is a foreign policy actor in its own right. It has its own institutional priorities and objectives that do not always align with those of the other EU institutions or national capitals.
So, what did the EP’s party groups have to say about China in the lead up to the June poll? Overall, China did not heavily feature in a campaign dominated by the economy, cost-of-living concerns, migration, the green transition, and Russia’s war in Ukraine. However, an espionage scandal involving the German far-right party, Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) was uncovered in April, when a staffer for the party’s top MEP, Maximilian Krah, was arrested on suspicion of passing information about the EP to Chinese intelligence services. The scandal shed light on Chinese influence operations in the EU, but it also highlighted the fact that, as with pro-Russian sentiment, affinity with China is more likely to be found on the far-left and far-right of the political spectrum. These findings were supported by a study of voting patterns from 2019-2024 amongst MEPs of the (now defunct) ID and European Left groups (Němečkov and Karásková 2024). The study found that, despite considerable internal fragmentation in both groups, MEPs within them were more likely to vote against resolutions critical of China.
Finally, party group manifestos offer insights into both the salience of China-related issues, as well as the range of views parties hold on them. Of the seven party blocs represented in the 2019-2024 EP, all except for ID issued an election manifesto. Table 1., below, which lists party groups on a left-right spectrum, records the number of times each manifesto mentioned China and whether each mention was positive, neutral, or negative. As the results reveal, mentions of China were overwhelmingly negative. Of a total of 25 mentions across six manifestos, 20 were negative, five were neutral and none were positive.
Table 1: Party Group Manifesto Mentions of China
| Positive | Neutral | Negative | Total mentions | |
| The Left | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Greens | 0 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| S&D | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| ALDE | 0 | 0 | 8 | 8 |
| EPP | 0 | 2 | 9 | 11 |
| ECR | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| ID | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Totals | 0 | 5 | 20 | 25 |
The most strongly negative framing of China was to be found in the manifesto of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), which is the largest party group within the Renew bloc. The ALDE manifesto portrays China as an economic and security threat (ALDE 2024). It calls for reducing dependency on China via de-risking, implementing targeted sanctions on Chinese officials who violate human rights, and is the only manifesto to mention the moribund CAI—arguing that it must not be revived until certain conditions are met on the Chinese side, including the lifting of sanctions on MEPs. The EPP manifesto makes 11 mentions of China, most of which are negative (EPP 2024). Again, the framing focuses on China as an economic competitor and a potential source of global instability in relation to Taiwan and the South China Sea. Three references to China-related challenges come in the context of the geopolitical shock caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Greens manifesto makes only three references to China, but all are negative (European Greens 2024). The framing is similar to the ALDE and EPP manifestos, with reference made to the contrast between the EU’s values, as a liberal democratic entity, and the values of authoritarian regimes, such as that of China.
By contrast, the EP’s second largest group, the center-left S&D, mentions China only once (PES Socialists and Democrats 2024). The reference is neutral, focusing on a need to “rebalance” relations with China, to facilitate cooperation, while also promoting EU values and interests. S&D’s relative caution on China likely reflects the perspective of its largest member party, Germany’s Social Democrats. ECR makes two neutral references to China (ECR 2024), taking a “nuanced stance” on the need to balance risks and opportunities in EU-China relations and calling for de-risking, while also advocating engagement. The Left group’s manifesto does not mention China at all (European Left 2024).
Looking ahead: national-level developments to shape the EP’s influence on EU-China relations
Given the above, what can we expect of the EU’s China policy over the next parliamentary term? On the one hand, the EPP’s strong election result puts Ursula von der Leyen in a good position to win a second term as Commission president. This would likely mean continuity on both trade and geopolitics. On the other hand, the Greens and Renew—the strongest supporters of the tough-on-China policy line—suffered the largest electoral losses. Following the formation of Patriots for Europe, Renew has fallen from third to fifth position, while the Greens have dropped from fourth to sixth position. The two far-right groups—Patriots and ECR—are the third and fourth largest blocs, respectively. Moreover, many of the non-aligned parties, most notably Germany’s AfD, are also ideologically far-right and pro-China. Slovakia’s leftist nationalist governing party, Smer, can also be added to the category of China-friendly, non-aligned parties. Indeed, Smer may join the Patriots bloc, despite its apparent ideological misfit as a “leftist” party.
Together, the far-left, far-right, and non-aligned parties comprise over a third of the incoming parliament. However, they cannot be straightforwardly aggregated, as there is no coherent policy position towards China across—or even within—these groups.
Therefore, the EP’s extremes will not be able to drive developments in EU-China relations, though they may play a spoiler role in relation to aspects of the Commission’s agenda. At the level of heads of government, Orbán is enthusiastically embodying just such a role, taking advantage of Hungary’s assumption of the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union to launch a surprise “peace mission” to Kyiv, Moscow, and Beijing. His Patriots group in the EP will likely echo his Russia- and China-friendly positions. Thus, if there are major changes to the EU’s China policy in the next five years, they will not come from Strasbourg, but from national capitals, most notably Paris, if Marine Le Pen were to win the French presidential election in 2027. This is, again, not to imply that the EP does not matter, but to underscore that its influence is relative and contingent. Part of the indirect influence of EP elections is in how the results bolster or undermine national governments. If the Council shifts to a more China-friendly footing, it will enhance the standing of China-friendly parties in the Parliament. Thus, the significance of the June 2024 EP elections for EU-China relations will depend also on election results and political reconfigurations yet to come.
Nicole Scicluna is an assistant professor in government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her research and teaching interests include the EU’s legal and political system and international law. Her research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals and she is the author of two books, European Union Constitutionalism in Crisis (Routledge 2015) and The Politics of International Law (Oxford University Press 2021).
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Published on August 15, 2024.
