On Thursday, EU leaders will receive Ukrainian President Volodymyr ZelenskyImage: keystone
June 18, 2026, 03:43June 18, 2026, 03:43
One day after the G7 meeting, Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz is meeting with heads of state and government from other EU states this Thursday evening – and again it’s about China. At the summit in Brussels, top politicians want to discuss, among other things, global economic challenges. This is particularly about how to approach Beijing.
Discussions on further support for Ukraine, the situation in the Middle East and the new long-term EU budget are also on the agenda of the two-day meeting.
Zelenskyj there as a guest
On Thursday, the EU leaders will first receive Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It is Zelenskyj’s first visit to the Belgian capital since his best-known opponent within the EU, former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was voted out of office in April.
Since then, Hungary’s new government of Peter Magyar has lifted several vetoes against EU initiatives to support Ukraine – allowing formal accession negotiations to begin and an aid loan worth 90 billion euros to be approved.
How to respond to China?
At a subsequent working dinner, the focus will be on Europe’s competitiveness and global economic imbalances – and how Europe can respond to them.
This is primarily about China, which exports a lot with enormous government support, buys little and achieves record surpluses. The often cheaper Chinese competition is putting a strain on Europe’s industry. With a new five-year plan, Beijing recently made it clear that China wants to continue to promote strategic industries such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
There is widespread agreement among EU states that the current economic imbalance vis-à-vis China is problematic in the long term and that measures are necessary. At their meeting, the top politicians want to discuss how to react and how to proceed. The Commission is also considering whether and how further trade policy instruments should be created.
At their meeting on Wednesday in Évian, France, the leaders of the leading democratic economic powers (G7) agreed to limit the import of certain raw materials in order to reduce the risk of blackmail by countries such as China.
The G7 and its partner countries in Évian. Image: keystone
The aim is to reduce the dependence on individual suppliers outside the G7 and its partner countries for rare earths and permanent magnets to less than 60 percent by 2030, it said in a joint statement. China dominates the global market for many of these raw materials, but is not specifically mentioned in the statement.
Budget discussions on Friday
On Friday the debate will revolve around the EU’s new community budget for the years 2028 to 2034. Heads of state and government are faced with the task of meeting the EU’s growing financial and investment needs, while many member states’ coffers are empty after years of successive crises.
Negotiations are likely to be tough: a compromise proposal presented last week by the Cypriot Council Presidency, which is considered the basis for discussions, envisages a reduction of the EU Commission’s proposed budget of 1.76 trillion euros by two percent. From the federal government’s point of view, this is far from enough; Berlin is calling for significant cuts in all areas.
Other countries that ultimately pay more into the huge pot than they get out – such as the Netherlands and Sweden – also consider the proposal to be unacceptable. The current goal is to reach an agreement by the end of the year.
Finally, the EU leaders will address the situation in the Middle East. The focus is on the recently reached preliminary agreement between the USA and Iran, which is intended to defuse the conflict between the two countries. (sda/dpa)