International Conference: "The EU and China Beyond 2020: Setting A New Agenda for Cooperation"

On 17 April 2020 in Bruges, the Baillet Latour Chair of EU-China Relations and the EU-China Research Centre, College of Europe, are hosting an international conference on the topic "The EU and China Beyond 2020: Setting A New Agenda for Cooperation".

In an effort to improve and formalize the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that they had established a decade earlier, in 2013 Brussels and Beijing launched the EU-China 2020 Strategic Agenda for Cooperation, an ambitious goal-setting document covering a wide range of initiatives in the fields of ‘peace and security’, ‘prosperity’, ‘sustainable development’, and ‘people-to-people exchanges’. Since this launch, significant convergence has been achieved between the EU and China, but strong disparities remain in other sectors, including trade, ICT and the broader digital economy. Overall, structural barriers seem to hinder further cooperation, even in those areas where progress was made under this Agenda.

As this document hits its ‘time deadline’, the EU and China are taking steps to continue their cooperation under a new Agenda looking beyond 2020. Firstly, as recently recalled in the Joint Declaration of the 2019 EU-China Summit, a number of initiatives that have been taken under the current Agenda are now heading towards a swift implementation. Meanwhile, a post-2020 Agenda is under negotiation, with the long-term goal of upgrading the EU-China partnership, facing existing and future challenges, and possibly exploring new areas of cooperation.

Also drawing on the ‘stocktaking’ conference on the 2020 Strategic Agenda, held by the Chair and the Centre in May 2019, this high-profile event will seek to examine the various areas of cooperation with a forward-looking eye, trying to draw possible agendas and scenarios envisaging how Brussels and Beijing might deal with each other, as well as with other global actors, in the coming years.

Call for papers (submission deadline: 12 January 2019)

For questions and further information, please contact: eu-china-conferences [at] coleurope.eu