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The worsening US-EU relations witnessed in 2025 have led many to believe that European-Chinese ties could flourish to redress certain geostrategic and economic imbalances. But a close look at history, as well as the recent political, social and economic postures of both sides, reveals that such a strategic shift is near-impossible due to the prominence achieved by Beijing and the systemic handicaps plaguing the EU that split its China relations into piecemeal chunks.

A published by the Atlantic Council this week, which aims to explore how Europe is waking up to the China challenge, explains the shortfalls that make a China-EU rapprochement a long shot. The EU apparatus makes policymaking on China a tedious and complex process that, even if goodwill and trust were to prevail on both sides, could frustrate any efforts toward integration.

The report explains how EU policymaking involves a multilayered process in which institutions and member states pursue overlapping and sometimes conflicting interests. At the EU level, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Council and the European External Action Service play distinct roles in shaping policy. Meanwhile, member states work to develop their own national approaches that influence EU-level decision-making. The result, according to the Atlantic Council, is a complex and often opaque interplay of actors, issues and interests that rarely align and could interfere with each other when it comes to shaping the bloc’s approach to China.

The EU apparatus makes policymaking on China tedious and complex and it could frustrate any integration efforts

Mohamed Chebaro

The weight and action of this machinery can best be seen through the poor results that the 25th EU-China Summit yielded in the summer. At a summit that many believed could help Europe set the stage to leverage more cooperation with China as a counterweight to US President Donald Trump’s aggressive posture against the bloc, the EU stayed true to its concerns about China. It evoked Beijing’s export surplus flooding Europe’s markets with cheap goods, as well as China providing support for Russia in its aggression against Ukraine.

However, all this was brushed aside by the Chinese leadership, which denied any imbalances existed or that things had reached an inflection point, as the EU suggested.

President Xi Jinping pointed out that “there are no fundamental conflicts of interest or geopolitical contradictions” between the two sides and urged the EU to “properly handle differences and frictions.” He even went as far as calling for the European side to keep its trade and investment markets open and to refrain from using restrictive economic and trade tools, in a tone suggesting he was ordering rather than hoping.

Those words are testament to the fact the Chinese know what they need and that Beijing is in a position to dictate. Meanwhile, the EU speaks with many voices, reflecting nation states’ individual interests. Even different regions within Europe pursue different priorities, from trade and manufacturing goals to climate policies and/or geopolitical positioning.

The EU project is clearly behind the times, not only as a result of the Trump-led America’s diverging interests leaving it exposed as an ally that has long been overreliant for its security and nuclear umbrella on the US, but also as a bloc that is lagging technologically too.

Take the technological sphere, in which China has clearly moved from being an imitator to an innovator. It is ahead of the EU in many areas seen as critical for future economic growth, as well as in areas held dear by Europe as it seeks to transition its societies and economies to net-zero emissions.

Xi’s words are testament to the fact the Chinese know what they need and that Beijing is in a position to dictate

Mohamed Chebaro

Above all, the Chinese model that fuses military and civilian use in terms of knowledge and research has caught Europe out. China’s military sector has been overhauled and modernized at speed, benefiting from and harnessing civilian technological advances.

European private-public sector partnerships remain a costly and untested apparatus for defense procurement. Just look at the EU special fund to upgrade its members’ military that was agreed this year to meet present and future challenges from the Ukraine war and an ever-encroaching Russia. The jury is still out on how efficiently the €800 billion ($926 billion) pledged will be spent on procurement from within EU nations, or whether it will be diverted to buy off the shelf from the US.

For years, the EU opened its doors, societies and systems for China to acquire defense-related knowledge. This appears to have been used to help build an increasingly assertive China that transfers its knowledge and dual-use materials to Russia in its war of aggression against Ukraine. Beijing has also openly used the influence it derived from its trade and investment prowess to promote its model of governance, with some success in the Global South and even in parts of Europe itself.

Meanwhile, the EU’s divergent national interests and economic dependencies weigh it down, as the individual political orientations among member states continue to add layers of complexity, hindering a collective approach on China that could keep Beijing in check.

In the eyes of many EU nations, China could demonstrate that it is committed to cooperation and projecting itself as a provider of solutions and supporter of peace and stability in a turbulent world. Such language is often used by China when it seeks positive cooperation, but it rarely uses its weight to sincerely vie for peace. And, yes, China’s geostrategic priorities might lie elsewhere. The EU, despite its consensus-based politics, remains a bloc that is ripe for the picking, but Beijing continues to fail to win over Europe and its large middle-class consumer market.

Short of that happening, China is likely to continue to dictate and the EU to reluctantly indulge. Or EU-China relations will remain a necessary tango, but they will forever have a less-than-compatible partnership in a changing world in which Europe is lagging behind.

• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist with more than 25 years’ experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.