SHANGHAI: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called for “a negotiated solution” at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to end a stand-off between Beijing and the European Union.

Sanchez’s visit to China has seen him meet top officials including President Xi Jinping and call for “dialogue and cooperation” with the world’s second largest economy. The trip comes against the backdrop of mounting trade tensions between the European Union and China, primarily over Beijing’s subsidies for its electric vehicles sector. Speaking at the inauguration of the Spain-China Business Forum in economic powerhouse city Shanghai, Sanchez called for a “a European Union and a China open to the world, beyond geopolitical and economic tensions”.

“That’s why we are betting on honest dialogue to solve existing tensions, that result in large part from the imposition of tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles,” he added. “And what do we propose from Spain? A solution negotiated and agreed in the WTO framework, that contributes to developing balanced and fair and avoids commercial escalation that benefits no-one,” Sanchez said.

The European Commission, which oversees the bloc’s trade policy, announced last month that it planned to impose five-year import duties of up to 36 percent on electric vehicles imported from China. The following day, Beijing said it would launch a probe into EU subsidies of some dairy products exported to China.

In June China launched an anti-dumping investigation into pork imports from the bloc in response to an application submitted by a local trade grouping on behalf of domestic producers. The Iberian nation is the EU’s largest exporter of pork products to China, selling more than 560,000 tons to the world’s second-largest economy last year at a total value of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion), according to industry body Interporc.

In China’s capital Monday, Sanchez called for Madrid and Beijing to defend what he called a “fair trade order”. “We must work together to resolve differences through negotiation, in a spirit of dialogue and collaboration, and within multilateral frameworks,” he wrote on social media after meeting President Xi. – AFP