The Diplomat
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, yesterday offered the President of China, Xi Jingping, to play a “constructive role” in improving the country’s relations with the European Union.
Sánchez held a telephone conversation with the Chinese leader, in which they discussed bilateral and other international issues.
According to a statement released by La Moncloa, Sánchez expressed his confidence that common ground could be found to create “the climate of trust necessary” for the ratification of the Global Investment Agreement between the two parties.
After agreeing with Xi Jingping that the agreement will favour a better balance between the interests of both parties in the long term, Sánchez expressed his willingness, according to the communiqué, “for our country to play a constructive role in relations between the European Union and China”.
Moreover, the two presidents expressed their interest in strengthening current economic, commercial and cultural relations at the bilateral level, and Sánchez took the opportunity to highlight that the Spanish Recovery Plan could extend collaboration to the ecological transition, electric mobility, the circular economy and digitalisation. The government is clear that China is a major trading partner for Spain, as it is the country’s second-largest supplier in the world.
Sánchez took advantage of the conversation to personally discuss with Xi Spain’s decision to allow, as of 24 May, the arrival of tourists from China who have a full course of one of the vaccines authorised by the EMA or the WHO.
The presidents also stressed the importance of strengthening the multilateral system to face the magnitude of the current challenges, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In this regard, the Presidents discussed cooperation during the pandemic and agreed on their interest in ensuring global, equitable and rapid access to vaccines. In particular. Sánchez once again defended his ‘Vaccines for all’ initiative and his commitment to act on three fronts: facilitating the transfer of technology and knowledge, eliminating barriers to increase vaccine production, and speeding up vaccine distribution, “so as not to leave anyone behind”.
Furthermore, both leaders agreed on the urgency of establishing a global climate agenda that is as ambitious as possible. For this reason, the head of the Executive offered Spain’s support for the success of the COP15 on Biodiversity to be held in October 2021 in the Chinese city of Kunming. Spain, with a very active policy in this area, is the country with the highest number of biosphere reserves in the world, with a total of 49.
