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A12 technology
Wednesday 4 OctOber 2023

EU announces plans to better protect

its sensitive technologies from foreign

snooping

A member of European Commission, left, prepares to exchange documents with Chinese
delegation at a signing ceremony after the 5th China-EU High Level Economic and Trade dialogue
at Diaoyutai State Guest House in Beijing, on Sept. 28, 2015.
(AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

By Raf Casert mediately carry out risk as- curity and military purpos-
Associated Press sessments of its most sensi- es. “China indeed is a big
BRUSSELS (AP) — The Euro- tive industries, including elephant in general terms,
pean Union announced advanced semiconductor, but in our recommenda-
plans on Tuesday to bet- artificial intelligence, quan- tion, we are country ag-
ter protect its cutting-edge tum and biotechnologies. nostic,” Jourova said.
technologies from for- Those are considered Thierry Breton, the EU's in-
eign snooping that might “highly likely to present the ternal market commission-
threaten its economy and most sensitive and immedi- er, said that the measures
security in the wake of re- ate risks related to technol- would reach well beyond
peated warnings that the ogy security and technol- Beijing.
bloc needs to “de-risk” its ogy leakage” and are up “We want to de-risk, but
relations with China. for the highest level of pro- not only with China, with
“Technology is currently tection. everybody, including some
at the heart of geopoliti- Even though the Europe- time, if it’s needed, with
cal competition and the EU an Commission refrained some of our like-minded
wants to be a player, and from putting the onus on partners,” he said.
not a playground,” Europe- any specific country, the How the risk assessments
an Commission Vice Presi- EU itself has repeatedly would be followed up with
dent Vera Jourova said. said that it must be bet- measures wasn't fully clear.
To better protect its rela- ter prepared to develop The measures are the lat-
tively open market, the Eu- measures to protect trade est example of the struggle
ropean Commission wants and investment that China the 27-nation has in setting
the member states to im- might exploit for its own se- its relations with Beijing. The
EU has said that despite
sometimes fundamen-
tal differences on human
rights and state involve-
ment in the economy, it
was no option to fully de-
couple relations with such
a superpower.
Hence, the EU has sought
to center on de-risking rela-
tions, and better protecting
its vital economic sectors
from undue interference.q