The title is a bit misleading, as the article says:

Instead [of a Russian LNG ban in the next the upcoming sanctions package], the Commission wants to iron out a new road map to end the bloc’s reliance on Russian energy by 2027.

The 50 cent warriors are somewhere else.

Amazing how this thread illustrates how many tankie alt accounts are here on Beehaw already.

Yeah, China and Spain appear to have good relationships. Spain’s PM Pedro Sanchez visited China just last week again, after his visits in 2024 and 2023.

One of Mr. Sanchez’s trusted figures regarding China-relations is former PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero from the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), who co-founded the Gate Center, a Spanish-Chinese organization aiming to strenghten the two countries’ ties., together with Chinese businessman Du Fangyong.

Mr. Zapatero has also acted as an intermediary to improve the image of Chinese company Huawei in Spain. The partner of Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares was vice president of Huawei Spain, and Esteban González Pons, deputy secretary general of Spain’s People’s Party (PP), supported Huawei’s participation in European technological infrastructure projects.

In 2021, another PP politician, MEP Gabriel Mato supported the EU-China Investment Agreement, highlighting its potential to open the Chinese economy to European investors and promote what he called “fairer conditions” (Mr. Mato did not elaborate about Beijing’s conditions for foreign investments in China, though). Last year, in 2024, Juanma Moreno, the president of the Spanish region of Andalusia, also made an official visit to China.

None of them ever discussed human rights issues, though.

@Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world

China or any of those others are no direct military threat to Europe.

Chinese soldiers are already fighting in Europe, killing Europeans, including civilians and children. The Chinese Communist Party is censoring reports on Chinese soldiers being caught in Ukraine, but it doesn’t censor Russia’s conscription ads. This suggests that the Chinese party-state not only knows about these soldiers, they actively support Russia once again by their inaction, constituting a direct threat to Europe.

Just read the article before you (intentionally?) misinterpret the content:

The admission of Chinese responsibility came during a secret meeting between outgoing Biden administration officials and Chinese representatives on the sidelines of a summit in Geneva in December 2024. […] The Chinese attendants referred indirectly to the activity as being a warning for the US to stay away from any attempts to support or defend Taiwan.

In 2023, then Chinese ambassador to France Lu Shaye (who is now Chinese envoy to Europe) said that former Soviet countries “have no effective status in international law.”

“In international law, even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have the effective status because there is no international agreement to materialize their status of a sovereign country,” [China’s ambassador Lu Shaye] said.

“He denies the very existence of countries like Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Kazakhstan, etc.,” [wrote] Antoine Bondaz, a China expert at the Paris-based think-tank Foundation for Strategic Research.

As EDRi-advisor Itxaso Domínguez de Olazábal cited in the article says, “Reopening the GDPR for simplification is risky," but the whole article is not about what its title suggests. I don’t want to play this down, but it’s a bit another clickbait headline by Axel Springer media. They somehow contradict themselves in the end:

According to Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems, the GDPR is still a “huge target” for lobbyists, but its core rules can’t easily be scrapped since the protection of personal data is enshrined in the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights as an inalienable freedom.

“A Court of Justice would annul a GDPR that doesn’t have these core elements," Schrems said. "So if it’s where [lobbyists] want to spend their energy, be my guest, but they’re not going to get there.”

As someone else already wrote, Chinese companies simply don’t care.

They hopefully can sidestep him again as they did once and form a 'coalition of the willing."

Addition: President Zelensky to the US: “When children and adults are killed by missiles, I do not understand why we cannot agree on additional Patriot systems.”

Second addition: Scene of destruction in Sumy after Russian attack – (video, 1 min)

At least 34 people have been killed and 117 injured in a Russian attack on the city of Sumy, according to Ukrainian authorities. Two ballistic missiles struck the city, with the second causing the most casualties when it exploded over a street, officials said. 20 buildings were damaged, including cafes, shops and five apartment buildings.

That’s true however China is slightly more democratic and doesn’t wage war on their neighbors.

I have to disagree. Although it is true there is no hot war at the moment, China has been increasingly aggressive toward Taiwan and practically all its neighbours (India, Buthan, Nepal, …) as you probably know. But, yes, I fully agree Europe and all others should become more self-sufficient.

I get your point, though I am afraid China is by no means a better partner.

A new survey of Southeast Asian opinion leaders shows renewed trust in the EU after last year’s decline

Last year [2024] saw trust in the EU drop by nearly 10% among the participants, which some experts attributed to Brussels’ support for Israel in Gaza. But the latest ISEAS-Yusof [2025] report shows the EU has recovered and surpassed its previous standing.

“The levels of trust in the EU saw a significant improvement this year, rising from 41.5% in 2024 to 51.9% this year for ASEAN-10 respondents,” the authors noted in the 2025 survey.

“One of my takeaways is that the European Union retained its top spot as the preferred ASEAN partner to hedge the great power rivalry between China and the United States,” Sujiro Seam, the EU ambassador to ASEAN, said in a video he released this week.

Brussels also saw improvements in its trustworthiness as a defender of free trade and regional security.

Yeah, seems to be a biased narrative. There are 30 or so countries involved, some are far away from Europe (Canada, Japan, Australia and South Korea). It is sort of a global Western alliance (without the U.S.). I am not a military expert, but it may be reasonable them not to agree on all details in the first meeting of the first day.

Countries like Canada or Japan may contribute troops on Ukrainian soil (Japan already said it wants to join a Nato command in Germany for the support of Ukraine), while Poland, a direct neighbour of Ukraine and now in the process of building one of the largest armies in Europe, may feel better to reserve its troops to protect its own border. Others like South Korea, Japan may provide certain manufacturing and technology. And so forth.

There is a strong commitment not only to Ukraine, though, but to the collective security that goes far beyond of Europe as China is closely watching what happens in Ukraine, becoming increasingly aggressive against its neighbours in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.

I fully agree with @CAVOK@lemmy.world. Don’t throw in the towel. Nothing is perfect, just help us to improve.

Australia’s is the most balanced approach imo, it declined Beijing’s proposal to work together to counter U.S. tariffs, saying instead it would continue to diversify its trade and lower its reliance on China, its largest trading partner.

China is ensnaring Europe only for its own advantage, and this can be seen not only through Beijing’s support of Russia’s war:

China is wooing Europe with technology, investments - and a smile. But anyone who looks behind China’s rhetoric will recognize the conditions: no criticism, no questions, no objections […]

Human rights? Tibet? Xinjiang? Are elegantly omitted. Anyone who raises them is either a “gangster” financed by the USA or a naïve idealist. [Victor Gao, ex-interpreter to politician Deng Xiaoping and now Beijing’s mouthpiece that promotes China’s line in the West] prefers to sell the high-speed train network, the next 6G expansion and the bubbling growth figures. - Problems? “Of course there are,” he says - and immediately changes the subject.

Addition:

A Europe-China tariff axis would be a dead end

It’s difficult to overstate just what a watershed moment this was for Europe (and one that China, with its globalization happy talk, still seems not to have absorbed). Once the mask has slipped, the illusion can’t be seen again. The US may be acting in an unfriendly manner right now, but at least it doesn’t have a historical dedication to the subjugation of liberal democratic freedoms — and there is always the chance that it will return to its senses at some point. What such hopes can Europe have for Communist China?

Expediency dictates there will be some cooperation between Europe and China, but don’t mistake it for anything more profound or longer lasting. Some things are worth more than an extra battery plant or two.

No one knows how many they recruited, Ukraine says it knows of these ~155.

Yes, because China had an underdeveloped industry. They needed the technology. In the long term there will be no Western company with a meaningful market share in China.As a foreigner you can’t even found a company in China without a Chinese partner who then owns the majority stake (the only exception being Tesla in this regard).

The digital euro won’t come before 2028, and even this is not sure as the legislation is not yet approved. Or did I miss something?

(That aside, there are many issues with digital fiat money to be solved yet, including privacy, financial censorship, and other things.)

[Edit typo.]

More diversification is certainly needed, without one big partner. The EU is currently in the process to discuss a free trade zone with Mercosur, it signed agreement with some countries in Central Asia, there is Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea, to name a few. We likely (hopefully0 will see a more decentralized global trade in the future which is a good thing imho.