BRUSSELS — Britain is hopeful of doing a deal with the European Union to avoid British businesses being hit by new Made in Europe trade rules, the minister in charge of talks has said.
European Relations Minister Hamish Falconer told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook Podcast it was “overwhelmingly in both sides’ interests” to strike an agreement on the proposed controls.
“For Europe to be more competitive and able to weather some of the shocks that we’re all talking about, we need to do it together,” he said. “I think that’s such an overwhelmingly powerful case that I am sure we will come to a sensible position on all this.”
Brussels is in the process of updating its trade rules to favor EU producers over those outside the bloc — and London fears some of its businesses will be locked out.
The U.K. has urged the EU to guarantee that British producers won’t be affected. Brussels says it can’t give those guarantees now as the rules are still working their way through the bloc’s cumbersome legislative process.
Yet in the event a deal isn’t reached, London believes its Brexit trade deal, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), could force Brussels to think again.
“Our arrangements in terms of how we trade are underpinned by the TCA. That’s a strong arrangement between us which is independently overseen,” Falconer said.
“It provides lots of protections to both sides. Our basic position to our friends is, look, I don’t think European competitiveness is enhanced by putting further impediments in the way of our industrial base.”
There are those in Brussels who agree. In-house lawyers at the EU Council have advised member countries that the bloc’s plans for the Industrial Accelerator Act could violate the union’s international trade deals, according to documents seen by POLITICO.
Falconer suggested the U.K. wanted a “straightforward” and “unfussy” arrangement where U.K. goods were simply counted as being of Union origin under the IAA.
But the minister wouldn’t be drawn on whether success at the upcoming U.K.-EU summit demanded an agreement on Made in Europe — as London had previously briefed.
That meeting is meant to sign off talks on agri-foods, youth visas, and emissions trading — as well as act as a launchpad for further negotiations.
“I don’t wanna get ahead of the discussions. I used to be a diplomat; there’s no discussion or negotiation that is made easier by publicly broadcasting it,” Falconer said.
The bigger reset
The minister rejected suggestions the EU was demanding the U.K. raise tariffs on Chinese cars in exchange for guarantees on the IAA. He stated that he was “surprised” at reports to that effect, adding: “That’s not the kind of conversation that I’m having with my European counterparts.”
Yet a landing zone may be emerging. EU officials and diplomats have previously indicated that reference could still be made to the subject at the meeting — perhaps in the form of a political declaration.
Falconer, who was in Strasbourg on Wednesday for his first European Parliament plenary, confirmed that he would be discussing “future options with European partners” — following Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s suggestion the U.K. could rejoin the EU, or at least its customs union or single market.
He is using the visit to meet with Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič, as well as European Parliament President Roberta Metsola. Of the EU institutions debating the industry act, Parliament is pushing for the strictest line on the Made in Europe rules.
Asked what options he was personally pushing for when it came to the future U.K.-EU relationship, Falconer wouldn’t be drawn, revealing only that Burnham would “say more” in a speech scheduled for around “the time of the summit.”
The meeting still has no officially announced date, though Nov. 20 is the latest in a string of days widely rumored to have been penciled in by diary officials in Brussels and London.
“I have a date in mind, but I don’t want to say it just yet,” Falconer told the podcast. “We will agree that with our friends, and you’ll be the first to know.”
STRASBOURG — Policymakers across the political spectrum are coalescing around a stronger approach to the European Union’s relationship with China — one that goes beyond trade measures.
A report from the Committee on Foreign Affairs on the EU-China political relationship paints China not just as an economic foe but also a geopolitical one that is undercutting European security.
The European Parliament will vote on the report on Wednesday, just in time for Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič’s trip to Beijing on Thursday, where he will meet with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao.
“I want him to go there with the strongest possible mandate from this house,” Hilde Vautmans, the report’s author, said in a debate on Tuesday evening. “Europe has economic power. It’s time to use it.”
The remarks echo those made by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron in a joint letter earlier this week, advocating that the European Commission be handed more powers to restrict or even cut off imports from countries that create “severe and systematic distortions” in the EU.
While some MEPs hailed the French-German joint approach as proof of a unified position, Polish MEP Mariusz Kamiński from the European Conservatives and Reformists said creating “pragmatic economic ties is not only cynical, but irresponsible or outright stupid.”
China is a “communist dictatorship that poses a threat to the free world,” he continued.
He’s not alone in that sentiment, as for many lawmakers, simply tackling Chinese overcapacity isn’t enough. The Commission needs to address China’s growing human rights abuses, escalations in the Taiwan Strait, and its role in the war in Ukraine, they said.
“We have to recognize that China is behaving in a way that is endangering our interests. Not just on trade but on security and defense,” said Spanish MEP Nicolás Pascual de la Parte from the center-right European People’s Party. “The human rights situation has not improved, but it has disappeared from our agenda in recent years.”
The lawmakers called out Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghur minority group in Xinjiang, which China has systemically placed in camps and prisons and persecuted. The Parliament stopped just short of calling the action a genocide in a 2024 resolution, saying it amounts “to crimes against humanity.”
Others like the EPP’s Michael Gahler called out Beijing’s encroachment on the island of Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory. China’s role in propping up the Russian economy while it fights Ukraine also received plenty of airtime.
The issues diverged, but the MEPs used Tuesday’s debate to call out the EU’s unequal relationship with China — a sign that Vautmans says is proof the bloc is coming to a unified stance toward the country.
“This is no longer just the position of the European Parliament or of one political group,” Vautmans said after the debate. “There is a growing recognition that Europe needs a more coherent China policy: open to dialogue and cooperation, but much more willing to defend its interests when necessary.”
In the latest issue of Why Is This Interesting, Mark Slavonia writes about the annual parallel parking championship in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where people compete to see who can parallel park.
The rules are that the clock starts ticking when the referee sees your reverse lights go on. — Read the rest
Boing Boing reader Dávid Sipos emailed us with a fun story:
I own a 1976 Volkswagen T2 that was used as a hero vehicle in Matchbox: The Movie. Months later, I discovered that my actual bus had become a Matchbox model.
Few things in movies happen by coincidence, and fewer still in a film so self-conscious as Cristian Mungiu’s “Fjord.” The Romanian filmmaker’s stoic drama is designed to provoke viewers in opposite directions, snaring them in waiting traps and causing them to concede in agony, “You have a point!” Every aspect is meticulously studied and worried over, careful not to push the movie’s thorny narrative too far away from Mungiu’s bold central mission: artistic objectivity in one of the most partial, biased and fundamentalist times in modern history. Experiencing “Fjord” is more like playing a puzzle game than watching a film — viewers will be better served if they remember specific details for later. The minutiae are the key to freeing oneself from Mungiu’s clever trap.
That’s also why, when “Fjord” opens with soft piano chords playing “Amazing Grace,” it’s safe to assume the song will be an integral motif throughout the film. Here, grace is doled out either liberally or not at all, restricted by governmental red tape and damning paperwork. As a concept, grace isn’t amazing so much as it is a clerical headache, made all the more complicated by the efforts of the Gheorghius, Mihai (Sebastian Stan) and Lisbet (Renate Reinsve), whose five children have been removed from their care by Norwegian child protection services. Despite their genial nature, the Gheorghius stick out like sore Evangelical thumbs when they immigrate from conservative Romania to Lisbet’s progressive Norwegian hometown. So when one of their children is found with bruises on her in school, the discovery sets off a chain of events in which the Gheorghius’ faith is tested, and their values persecuted.
(Tudor Panduru/Neon) Jonathan Ciprian Breazu, Renate Reinsve, Filip Sebastian Barau, Sebastian Stan, Vanessa Cebam and Teodora Sabina Barau in “Fjord”
Though “Fjord” is an interesting film on its own, it’s an even more compelling experiment in how today’s over-explained world encourages people to watch movies: looking for the good and bad, right and wrong, protagonist and antagonist.
Or are they? In his biggest feature yet — aiming for Oscar contention after winning the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes earlier this summer and screening at this year’s New York Film Festival — Mungiu repeatedly asks this question. Who is doing the most good when, ostensibly, everyone is trying to do the right thing, acting within their rights as parents or arms of the government? The answers aren’t at all simple, and Mungiu has no intention of making them so, much less revealing the whole truth behind the film’s central doubts.
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At times, this makes the humble viewer feel a bit like a guinea pig in a focus group; the audience’s reactions are integral to measuring the film’s success. Though “Fjord” is an interesting film on its own, it’s an even more compelling experiment in how today’s over-explained world encourages people to watch movies: looking for the good and bad, right and wrong, protagonist and antagonist.
The problem is that the world outside the cinema is far more complex than those binary ways of thinking allow. If films are a reflection of the world we live in, Mungiu’s film reflects a reality where objectivity is at risk of extinction. In “Fjord,” Mungiu tests neutrality’s limits when the stakes are at their highest. And while his impartiality occasionally and inevitably falters, the missteps show how difficult, and ultimately useless, it is to ignore humanity’s wide-ranging gray areas to make a beeline for black or white.
Inspired by the events surrounding Ruth and Marius Bodnariu — a devout Christian couple who, in 2015, were separated from their five children by Norwegian social services for seven months on a similar suspicion of mistreatment — “Fjord” quickly gets to the root of its conflict. The Bodnariu case drew international attention from Christian fundamentalist groups, who asserted that the conservative family was facing religious persecution by a liberal government. To the Christian right, the Bodnarius were examples of unchecked left-wing power and an attack on personal freedoms. To Norway’s child services group, the Barnevernet, the Bodnarius were a model of the progressive but necessary systems put in place to protect children. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle, in the opaque unknown.
Enter Reinsve and Stan, an ideal pair of leads capable of providing the understated, baseline emotion that Mungiu requires to pull off an undertaking as tricky as “Fjord.” Neither Lisbet nor Mihai can exhibit too much passion or zealotry, too much unjust anger or warranted affection. They must, at all times, walk a very thin line to maintain just the right amount of clearheaded patience, lest Norwegian officials — or we, the audience — suspect that any truth is the absolute truth.
(Neon) Renate Reinsve and Øyvind Venstad Kjeksrud in “Fjord”
But “Fjord” is not a mystery. The overarching question shrouding the film is not, “Did they do it?” but rather, “So what if they did?” Mungiu presents information in a cold, straightforward fashion, asking the viewer to weigh Mihai’s admitted slap or two on the butt as corporeal punishment against the forever unknown extent of the family’s discipline and the government’s ensuing reaction. In the process, Mungiu naturally runs into roadblocks that he can’t pass, dogwhistles to conservative and religious leaders around the world who decry government interference. In a recent New York Magazine profile of Stan, Mungiu admits: “Because I don’t explicitly approve or condemn the positions that I bring to public debate, the supporters of these groups will always try to capitalize on that and claim this simple lack of firm judgment equals a ‘victory.’
If “Fjord” earns the awards attention it’s gunning for, I’d expect that the next months will be filled with debates over whether the film is conservative-leaning or ultimately progressive, all of which will be moot and useless. Mungiu’s intention is not to make the audience look more closely — quite the opposite.
That begs the question: How much responsibility does a filmmaker have to take a clear stance in their work, especially in a film that is overtly intended to be a lightning rod for heated debate? None, I’d argue — so long as that filmmaker can present either side of said debate with as much tact as the other. If objectivity is the initiative, then both viewpoints must have their advantages and follies fully rendered. It’s only fair!
As it turns out, equity is difficult to maintain in such an absurd age. Though he keeps a mostly steady balance, Mungiu depicts the Norwegian left as well-meaning progressive dopes a few too many times to remain truly objective. When child services representatives express their shock that the teenage Gheorghiu children don’t have internet access at home, can’t go on YouTube, and — gasp! — don’t have smartphones, their surprise blunts Mungiu’s sharp point.
“The people who have the power to rip children from their families believe that it’s in a child’s best interest to have a brainrot device,” these moments suggest with a wink. While these facets might depict our tech-obsessed age, Mungiu writes them in a way that makes the Norwegians look silly, and the Gheorghius look like objectively good parents. But, then again, maybe a critic who doesn’t want to shoot his phone would think differently. Such is the beauty of Mungiu’s observational, deceptively nuanced writing.
If “Fjord” indeed earns the awards attention it’s gunning for, I’d expect that the next months will be filled with debates over whether the film is conservative-leaning or ultimately progressive, all of which will be moot and useless. To deem a film whose worst mistake is some inherent goofiness as “insidious” defeats the entire point. Mungiu’s intention is not to make the audience look more closely — quite the opposite. His film takes a bird’s-eye approach to conflict, carefully studying how the systems set in place for our common good, on either side of the party or religious lines, can cause plenty of damage, too. If humanity doesn’t exist on a binary, perhaps the emphasis shouldn’t always be on trying to see eye to eye; otherwise, no one can take a clear look at what’s happening in the periphery.
“Fjord” screens from Sunday, October 4 at the New York Film Festival, with a wide theatrical release October 9.
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