ROME — European Union leaders said they told China in a virtual summit Friday that they expect Beijing to help end Russia’s war in Ukraine and at the very least not to interfere with international sanctions imposed on Moscow.
“We expect China, if not supporting the sanctions, at least to do everything not to interfere in any kind,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters after the meeting. “On that point we were very clear.” She added that the EU expected China to use its influence on Russia to end to the war.
Von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel held separate sessions by videoconference with Chinese President Xi Jinping and its prime minister, Li Keqiang on Friday where they discussed the war in Ukraine, as well as a series of trade and human-rights issues.
The long-scheduled summit was an important opportunity for EU leaders to set out their expectations for Beijing, which has sought to avoid taking a clear position on the invasion. But it’s not clear that they won any new commitments from China on Ukraine.
Europe is trying to strike a difficult balance: giving China a stern warning over Ukraine, human rights and trade issues, while still trying to maintain the EU’s objective of re-engaging with the Asian giant.
“We called on China to help end the war in Ukraine,” Michel said at a news conference in Brussels. “China cannot turn a blind eye to Russia’s violation of international law.”
Beijing, for its part, has sought to keep the conflict from pushing the two sides further into opposing blocs, sparing European officials the criticism it levels at their American counterparts and urging them to assert their strategic autonomy from Washington. In the meeting Friday, Xi said the current situation risks erasing the benefits of global economic cooperation and that Beijing and Brussels should commit to preventing spillover from the crisis, according to China’s foreign ministry.
The EU leaders also warned their Chinese counterparts against helping Russia either on avoiding sanctions, or by supplying weapons, underlying this would only serve to prolong the war and hurt global trade.
“Prolongation of the war and the disruptions it brings to the world economy is in no one’s interests, certainly not in China’s,” von der Leyen said.
The Chinese side told the EU chiefs that Beijing was doing what it could to ensure parties negotiate and arrive at a solution, according to a person familiar with the meeting who declined to be named. The Chinese leaders said they had an obvious interest in the war not destabilizing the global economic order any further, and insisted on their great attachment to the Charter of the United Nations, as well as their respect for the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, the person said.
China focused most of its readouts on trade and a range of other topics, but a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson tweeted that Xi told EU leaders that the current situation in Ukraine is “deeply regrettable” and that Beijing “stands on the side of peace.”
Xi called on Europe to “form its own perception of China” and to adopt an independent China policy, according to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Xi also said that peace talks were the only way out and that Europe must address security concerns of all sides in the conflict.
In the first meeting of the summit, the prime minister told the EU leaders that China is willing to play a constructive role with the international community on Ukraine.
“China has been promoting talks for peace in its own way, and will continue to work with the EU and the international community to play a constructive role for early easing of the situation, cessation of hostilities, prevention of a larger-scale humanitarian crisis, and the return of peace at an early date,” Li said, according to a readout from the official Xinhua News Agency.
The EU leaders said they raised contentious issues including coercive trade measures against Lithuania, human rights in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The EU leaders, however, offered to continue to cooperate on a range of issues from the COVID-19 pandemic to biodiversity and climate change.
