German Chancellor Merz says it has asked the cabinet to work on proposals for EU trade with China

Germany has form here as the member state that most consistently shapes and slows EU China policy, given the exposure of its auto and industrial exporters to the Chinese market; Berlin's posture has historically set the ceiling on how far Brussels can go in either direction, whether on tariffs, investment screening, or de-risking language. Cabinet-level proposal work of this kind is the early, pre-legislative stage: past episodes have tended to run from national positioning to EU-level negotiation, where the commission holds trade competence and member state divisions, particularly between export-dependent economies and more hawkish ones, determine the outcome. The distinction worth drawing is between proposals aimed at defending European industry against Chinese imports, which feed into existing trade defence instruments, and proposals aimed at preserving or expanding German commercial access, which point the other way; the chancellor's track record and coalition constraints matter for which direction this takes. Follow-ons are the scope of the proposals when circulated, the commission's response, and alignment or friction with Paris, since Franco-German convergence has historically been the precondition for any durable EU China stance. Until a draft exists, this is a positioning signal rather than policy.