The European Commission announced an investigation Tuesday into Chinese wind turbine suppliers to determine whether foreign subsidies have given them an unfair advantage in the European market.
EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Tuesday that development conditions would be checked for wind parks in Spain, Greece, France, Romania and Bulgaria.
Vestager said the EU would need a more systematic, case-by-case approach to the investigations, rather than one akin to playing “whack-a-mole.”
"We need to do it before it is too late,” she said.
“We can’t afford to see what happened on solar panels happening again on electric vehicles, wind or essential chips,” Vestager added, referring to Chinese dominance in the European solar panel market.
“The result is that nowadays, less than 3% of the solar panels installed in the EU are produced in Europe,” Vestager said.
She explained that the investigations are “not meant to constrain China’s success. They’re meant to restore fairness in our economic relations.”
The investigation falls under the 2023 foreign subsidies regulation, which as of last year permits the assessment of whether foreign subsidies allow for companies to submit public tender offers that are too advantageous.
The investigation follows two others last week that assessed whether Chinese public tender bidders for a Romanian solar power park benefited disproportionately from subsidies.
Another subsidy investigation was launched last October on Chinese EV producers under suspicions that subsidies allowed the firms to maintain low prices and gain an unfair advantage on the market.
China has previously called Western concerns about EV subsidies leading to overcapacity “groundless” and has asserted the country’s success on the international market is attributed to innovation.
Some information in this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
