BRUSSELS, Belgium: Europe's safety concerns about Chinese goods are not a politically motivated effort to protect its market, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said Monday.
"The allegation that European companies' action against toxic Chinese goods is politically motivated and shows bias against China is totally false," he said. "This is not a question of trade, but of health."
The EU trade chief was responding to a Chinese official's claims, made on China Central Television's economic channel on Sunday, that concerns over the safety of Chinese products were protectionist — an attempt to defend China's reputation after the latest in a string of safety problems when the world's largest toy maker, Mattel Inc., recalled millions of Chinese-made toys tainted with toxic lead paint.
Li Changjiang, director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said he believed there was a "new trend in trade protectionism."
The TV program is the latest in China's recent push to prove it is a safe manufacturer and exporter of goods amid discoveries by countries around the world of high levels of chemicals and toxins in Chinese products from toothpaste to fish.
But Mandelson warned that the European Union would contest in the strongest terms any Chinese move to create a pretext for retaliatory action.
"Action should be taken where this is needed but otherwise the bulk of our trade should continue as normal," he said. "I will not accept claims of toxicity being used as a pretext for protectionism. Equally, I will give firm backing to European companies having to reject goods that are dangerous to consumers, including young children."
French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde backed him up.
"What we need to be sure of, is that the security norms are respected, particularly on products for children. We can't do a boycott on countries. It is not a question of protectionism."
Both EU and French officials stressed that they would not discriminate against one country.
But China is the source of close to half of all problem consumer products — excluding food — seized by the EU last year. To some extent this reflects trade flows, since over a quarter of all goods the EU imports are from China.
Even before the Mattel recall, EU officials had asked China to report back regularly on what it was doing to improve toy safety.
Trade tensions with China are already high as its trade surplus with the rest of the world continues to balloon. Mandelson claimed in June that he had won recognition from China that it needed to do something to avoid trouble as pressure grows in the EU and U.S. to bring in trade sanctions.
The EU has asked China to help soothe potential problems with the lifting of textile quotas next year and called on Beijing to be more open to foreign businesses trying to break their way into the world's most populous market.
