In the end the result was not even close: just five of the 15 capitals required to block the duties of up to 35.3 per cent on the imports cast a vote against, despite frantic lobbying from Beijing and Berlin to oppose them.
A dozen abstentions might not look like glowing support on paper, but in Brussels they were seen as efforts to offer simultaneous, if lukewarm, support for the commission’s findings, while staying out of Beijing’s retaliatory firing line.
A defeat would have left commission chief Ursula von der Leyen’s hawkish China agenda dead in the water before her second team of commissioners is put in place.
EV subsidies doubled in China
The EU’s decision to keep countervailing duties on EVs was significant because “it strengthens the new commission and it gives the right signal as to where the EU is in its relations with China – also towards the US prior to its presidential election”, according to Alicia Garcia-Herrero of French investment bank Natixis.