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| Tuesday, 8 February 2005 |
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EU pledges not to impose quotas on Chinese textile imports: report BEIJING (AFP) - The European Union has assured Beijing it will not follow Turkey's lead by imposing quotas on textiles it imports from China, state media reported Monday. Claude Veron-Reville, spokeswoman for EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, told the China Daily there was no going back on the EU's decision to remove quotas. Such "measures would have to be fully justified", Veron-Reville said, adding that the EU's current priority was to ensure a smooth transition to a quota-free regime following the lifting of global quotas on January 1. Turkey slapped quotas on 42 categories of Chinese textile imports in December and soon after Euratex, Europe's largest textile-industry lobby group, called for action against China. Commerce Minister Bo Xilai last week expressed "deep concern" at the Turkish move. The China Daily said EU trade officials and politicians had discussed whether Turkey's action should lead the EU to do likewise in a closed-door meeting last month. Mandelson's spokeswoman said the EU was only working on guidelines for safeguards. "We want to get them right, not rushed," she said, adding: "The EU strategy for the textile and clothing sector is not a protectionist one but it is a forward-looking one and focuses on our strength." Decades-long quotas that governed the apparel trade were lifted on January 1, according to the 1995 Agreement on Textiles and Clothing. As such, trade in textile and clothing products cannot be subject to any quantitative restrictions. China is the European Union's leading textile supplier, accounting for 17.5 percent of all its textile imports in 2003. |
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