Paper Titles & Abstracts

In 2006 the EU-China relationships were given new impetus: during the Ninth Summit in Helsinki the negotiation of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement was launched in order to update the Agreement of 1985 in light of the complex system of relations developed in the last decades. The aim was to broaden the scope of the agreement and to include not only economic but also political issues, such as the political cooperation, the climate changes and the financial regulations. Although the objectives of the negotiations have been often confirmed by the parties, the negotiations currently sluggish, and the political will seems different from the original. In other words the agreement, primarily focusing on economic issues, could represent a step backwards. There are several confirmations of such inversion of trend; the paper will provide an overview of these evidences. It will also investigate whether the scenario can evolve differently than expected, as a consequence of the recent change of leadership in the Chinese Government. To do so the paper will consider if this factor can in itself counterweight other opposite influences, in particular the EU's sovereign debt crisis and the debate concerning the Chinese purchasing of EU bonds.