Historical economic agreement between the European Union and China: after seven years of negotiations and thirty-five mediation meetings, on 30 December 2020 Brussels and Beijing announced the "Comprehensive Agreement on Investment" (CAI), a bilateral agreement for economic investment worth 600 billion euros. The agreement, the details of which will have to be defined, opens up the Chinese market to European companies, in particular those whose operations up to now have been limited by precise barriers, such as the electric car sector, telecommunications, healthcare, cloud computing services and financial services. Chinese companies will also benefit from the agreement, by virtue of which they will be able to invest in EU countries in the renewable energy sector.
In compliance with the agreement, maximum transparency on state subsidies to companies will be guaranteed and China is committed to facilitating the transition to the rules of international conventions against forced labour. All this to implement a volume of trade that, according to Eurostat, in the first ten months of 2020 has settled at 477 billion euros, 2.2% more compared to the same period of 2019. According to Eurostat analyses, in 2019 the EU exported goods for 198 billion to China and imported goods for 362 billion euros, with a bilateral trade of 560 billion euros.