Welcome to the European Parliamentary Research Service podcast on the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment.

As the world's second largest economy and with an ever-expanding domestic market, including a growing wealthy middle class and a taste for high quality products with foreign labels,

China is an opportunity European businesses and investors cannot afford to ignore.

But it's a difficult market to access and not a very fair nor transparent one.

So what is the EU doing to achieve a real level playing field for EU investors in China?

Stay with us.

The EU and China are strategic markets for each other, trading on average over a billion

euros a day. The EU offers Chinese and other foreign investors access to this market under

the same conditions as European companies, but this openness doesn't

work both ways.

No, it doesn't.

China's market is known as one of the most restrictive and closed in the world.

Foreign investors are not allowed to access some strategic sectors and European companies

operating in China do not benefit from the same levels of transparency and fair competition as those enjoyed

by Chinese companies in the EU market.

The problem is that from a legal point of view, China is not doing anything wrong.

First, there is no multilateral investment agreement setting out binding rules for market access

or investment protection. And second, China made very limited commitments

on regulating trade and trade-related investment measures when it joined the World Trade

Organization back in 2001.

In recent years, however, we've seen some attempts from China to open up a bit and ensure

equal treatment of domestic and foreign invested firms with regard to land supply, government procurement, licensing formalities

...