The European Union’s (EU) trade unit has partially defused a trade conflict with Chinese telecom firms, by dropping part of its complaint and offering negotiations later this year.
As part of the move, the European Commission (EC) said it will stop an anti-dumping investigation into imports of mobile telecommunications networks and other essential equipment from China, worth €1bn per year.
EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said: "I am pleased that EU and China have recently been able to resolve a number of trade frictions, not least the polysilicon case and the wine case where China terminated their investigation without imposition of any duty."
The latest move forms part of ‘a broader deal to defuse trade tensions between the EU and China’.
In May 2013, the EC started a probe into Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE over the alleged sale of products to European mobile telecom firms at low prices and upsetting the interests of local firms such as Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent.
"There are a number of demands we would like to see fulfilled before we can decide on the subsidies case," De Gucht added.
