Cina blocks EU’s efforts to form WTO panels on Lithuania export freeze and hi-tech patents

Cina blocks EU’s efforts to form WTO panels on Lithuania export freeze and hi-tech patents

Beijing said the moves were ‘puzzling and premature’ but will not be able to stop the bloc from continuing with the case next month
The two cases centre on claims that Lithuanian firms are being punished for the country’s ties with Taiwan and intellectual property protections


China blocked the European Union’s efforts to launch two dispute hearings at the World Trade Organization on Tuesday, saying the moves were “puzzling” and “premature”.

The EU had wanted to bring two separate cases where it accuses Beijing of breaching global trading rules before WTO judges.

 The first case is a high-profile spat over the alleged economic coercion of Lithuania, whose exporters found themselves frozen out of the Chinese market late last year.

In the second dispute, the EU claims China is using domestic courts to undermine intellectual property laws, thereby allowing Huawei Technologies, Xiaomi and other telecoms giants to secure cut-price technology licences.

At a meeting of the WTO’s dispute settlement body in Geneva on Tuesday, China said the request to establish a disputes panel to hear the Lithuania case was “premature”, according to a Geneva trade source.

According to the source, Chinese representatives to the WTO said that Beijing held formal consultations with Brussels “in good faith” and continued to engage after this stage was completed in April “with a view to exploring the possibility of resolving the dispute in an amicable way”.