The European Union will have to spend more on defense and technology to achieve autonomy, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.
“If you intend to be autonomous, you have to pay your own expenses,” the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs told Euronews in an interview Thursday. “If you want to live under the protective umbrella of the United States from the military point of view, it’s certainly cheaper. But it’s also certain that you’re dependent.”
He warned that the EU was “certainly not doing enough to maintain our own capacity for action” when it comes to the development of 5G networks.
China “knows perfectly that technological supremacy is fundamental in the world,” Borrell said. “And they are doing everything they can to get it. And we … run the risk of losing it, if we don’t invest enough in innovation, in development. Or if we rely on the technologies that others are going to provide us.”
On relations with Beijing, Borrell said: “I think there’s a feeling in the Western world that a certain level of equality must be restored in our relations with a nation that still presents itself as a developing country.”
But he added that while China was a “systemic rival” for the EU, the bloc didn’t have “to be systematically in rivalry” with Beijing.
“They’re two different things,” he argued. “A systemic rival means there are rival systems. And a systematic rivalry is when every day you’re always fighting over things. The latter, no.”
He said the EU was negotiating an investment agreement to create more balance in the relationship with China, but cautioned that “this depends on China seeing its interest in maintaining … that relationship.”
On U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, Borrell said the exercise appeared to have backfired.
“If the goal was to reduce the trade deficit, it’s not succeeded,” he said. “Which means things aren’t as simple as some might believe, those who say: ‘I’ve got a trade deficit. Well, I’ll raise tariffs.’ Well, no, because that provokes reactions and the reactions of the different parties can end up backfiring.”
Regarding the question of whether the EU could impose sanctions on Turkey over Ankara’s activities in the Eastern Mediterranean next week, Borrell said the EU was conducting a “review [of] its relationship with Turkey,” with some countries “more reluctant” to impose punitive measures. “Everything will depend on the assessment … of what’s happened since the previous review,” he said.