Watching China in Europe - June 2026

Last month, the Federation of German Industries (BDI) shared a confidential three-page memo with its members, laying out four possible futures for German and European policy towards China. Berlin and Brussels, the powerful industry lobby said, could stick with the “slow, uncoordinated, and ineffective” approach of recent years, they could put their concerns aside and embrace deeper economic integration with China, or they could head in the opposite direction, towards a hard decoupling.

Alternatively, the memo said, they could choose a fourth path: a far more ambitious de-risking agenda. This path, the BDI concluded, was the only tenable option - the least bad of these unsavory courses of action. “We need to pursue a much more forceful de-risking policy - even if this comes with substantial costs, including retaliatory measures,” the memo reads. “In the long run, passivity would be far more costly, economically and for our security.”