Abstract
The French presidency of the European Union will have Euro-Chinese relations high on its international agenda. As the President of the European Commission observed in her State of the Union address in September 2020, nothing is both more strategic and more difficult for Europe than its relationship with China. As a result, the ability of Europeans to unite to implement a balanced relationship with China determines a major part of the geopolitical status that the European Union aspires to in this century, over and above the acquis of each member state's bilateral relations. For a long time, the relationship between Europe and China was one of intellectual fascination, sometimes reciprocal, before becoming the embodiment of a complex, sometimes contradictory, set of economic and political relations against the backdrop of the forced march of globalization. Today, the mood is more one of frustration and denunciation than of positive appreciation of the situation and its potential. As always, " criticism is easy, but art is difficult ". Before turning to the difficulties of the present, I'd like to remind you that for almost five centuries, Europe and China have recognized each other as autonomous but complementary poles of knowledge and progress, regardless of the vicissitudes of history. Once I have evoked these distinctive features of " l'Europe chinoise " and " la Chine européenne ", I will turn to the challenges facing the French Presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2022.
