BEIJING, (AFP) - The European Union wants greater access to the Chinese market, especially in the auto and textile industries, a ranking official with the European Commission said.
Foreign auto makers are still waiting for an end to Chinese rules requiring them to operate separate distribution channels for locally-made and imported cars, said Jean-Paul Mingasson, head of the Commission's Enterprise Directorate General.
"We've been told that a solution is near but we haven't seen it yet," he told AFP in Beijing.
The European textile industry, for its part, is bracing itself for the end of the quotas on all textile exports at the end of the year, with China expected to be the major beneficiary.
"The Chinese are definitely going to put a spanner in the works for some of our usual suppliers," said Mingasson, referring to textile makers in low-cost countries like Romania, Turkey and Morocco.
At the same time, he said, European textile makers were faced with "problems of entering the Chinese market."
Another "very big problem" is in the construction industry, where foreign companies are now forced to register inside China in an expensive procedure if they want to participate in local projects, Mingasson said.
While pushing for improved market access, the European Union also wants to provide China with technical assistance in its efforts to improve the certification system for its products.
China hopes to go one step further and enter into a mutual agreement on recognition of certification authorities but the time is not ripe yet, Mingasson said.
In the meantime, China is imposing a certification system for the products it imports that is both costly and time-consuming, he said.