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EU leaders will travel to Beijing for the Dec. 6-7 summit with President Xi Jinping amid signs that the bloc’s eastern flank, stretching from Finland to the Black Sea, is being undermined. to become a hybrid battlefield with efforts by Russia and China to exploit weak links in European and Black Sea security. economic architecture.
Coming soon on Visegrad Insight:
- Antonios Nestoras explores what Ukraine can learn from the Western Balkans regarding the EU enlargement process.
- Paul Taylor asks whether the enlargement campaign can enable and strengthen European democracy.
EU/REGIONAL
- EU leaders will hold a summit with President Xi Jinping in Beijing on December 6-7. The agenda of the first physical high-level meeting since 2019 includes the rebalancing of trade and market access as well as Russia’s war against Ukraine, with the EU likely to voice concerns over China’s support for Moscow.
- The meeting comes after a similar summit between Xi and President Joe Biden. in San Francisco on November 15, which also sought to ease tensions on economic rivalries between Taiwan and Ukraine.
- West’s attempts to redefine relations with Beijing come as Chinese influence in CEE grows despite disintegration of 17+1 formula This proposal was enthusiastically adopted by Poland’s eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party in 2016, by Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and by some non-EU countries in the Western Balkans.
- China’s aggressive posture against the West, its subjugation of Hong Kong, threats against Taiwan and management of the COVID-19 pandemic split CEE approach to China, with Poland, Czechia and Baltics taking a cautious linewhile Hungary and Serbia continue to cultivate political and commercial ties.
- As the EU seeks to curb what it sees as unfair competition from Chinese electric vehicle makers, Chinese companies strike deals with Hungary and Slovakia will build battery mega-factories there. In Poland, Chinese companies seek to expand their presence in the port of Gdynia, on the Baltic Sea, which has become a hub for deliveries of NATO equipment (more details below).
- As improbable as it may seem, it now seems that the Chinese ship suspected by Finland and Estonia of having damaged underwater gas and communications links between the two countries in October did so on purposedragging its 6-ton anchor more than 100 miles to the bottom of the Baltic Sea, according to Finnish officials.
- Finland, which joined NATO this year, has been forced in recent weeks to close all border crossings with Russia after Moscow began transporting hundreds of irregular migrants towards the country in the repetition of hybrid attacks against the Baltic States and Poland. Warsaw said it would send troops to Finland to help the new NATO ally secure its long border, prompting a furious rebuke from Moscow.
- The EU is accelerating talks on overhauling and coordinating its defense industry, which critics say is long overdue in the face of Russia’s accelerating arms production. Both Charles Michel, chairman of the board and President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen have published their proposals on a subject which suffers from notorious rivalries between national industries.
- The COP 28 president was criticized for his comments that there was no ‘no science’ behind phasing out fossil fuels. Sultan Al Jaber of the United Arab Emirates went on to say that such elimination would return the world “to the caves.”
Political tensions increase in Ukraine
UKRAINE
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