Article 22 of the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights asserts that “the Union shall respect cultural, religious and linguistic diversity.”
Or perhaps not.
The EU is expected imminently to announce a major trade deal with communist China, a regime that has about as much “respect” for those diverse rights as oceanic whitetip sharks have respect for shipwrecked sailors. China, after all, has thrown 2 million of its Uighur citizens into reeducation gulags, sterilized many thousands, and used the rest for slavelike labor. Hong Kongers are marginally luckier: They’ve simply seen Beijing shred its treaty commitments under the Sino-British joint declaration and crush the city’s democratic rule of law.
For a fleeting moment, these concerns, especially the Uighur issue, had undermined the EU’s support for a deal. French President Emmanuel Macron’s government last week pledged that it would not support German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s rush to conclude an agreement unless China agreed to adopt international protections against forced labor. Regrettably, the EU has now changed course. On Tuesday, Politico quoted an EU commission official (the commission is the EU’s executive authority) explaining how the forced labor issue had been resolved. “Notably, the official stressed that China agreed to ‘make continued and sustained efforts’ to pursue the ratification of two fundamental International Labor Organization norms: the Forced Labor Convention (C029) and the Abolition of Forced Labor Convention (C105).”
The devil is hiding in the details of that language. China hasn’t actually agreed to sign up to the conventions, only to “make continued and sustained efforts” to pursue ratification. That distinction is defining. Indeed, it is ludicrous. The EU is basically giving Beijing a pass on its use of Uighurs as cotton-picking slaves. The EU knows why China loves to sign up to “efforts” to attempt to ratify international agreements. It’s because those “efforts” can be interpreted in deliberately vague, untimely, and unenforceable ways. Put simply, the EU has sold its soul for a few meaningless words.
Why is the EU happy to betray its own supposedly sacred values?
Well, because this trade deal will offer European businesses increased access to Chinese markets and the prospect of tens of billions of dollars in new Chinese investments into Europe. China views the deal as a top priority for its own reasons. It knows that the agreement will further divide the EU from the United States, thus encouraging America’s allies to adopt an appeasement stance toward Beijing’s South China Sea imperialism, intellectual property theft, and human rights policies. In that sense, the trade deal is a linchpin of China’s long-term effort to degrade and displace the post-Second World War liberal international order. Just one month ago, the French and German foreign ministers pledged to rebuild Atlantic relations. It seems obvious that they didn’t mean it.
There’s a lesson here. As with the commitment of its archon, Merkel, the EU’s support for the liberal international order is very much up for sale.
