China’s economic pressure on Lithuania represents a major threat to “the most sacred part” of the European Union, according to a senior German politician, and raises the likelihood that the European countries will wind down economic relations with the truculent communist power.

“What the Chinese are effectively doing [is] they are trying to undermine the most sacred part of Europe’s common policy, which is the single market,” Germany’s Reinhard Butikofer, who leads the China delegation in the European Parliament, told the Washington Examiner. “China is trying to break the principles that are governing that common European project.”