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Sweden seeks to boost camp of liberal EU states

  • Sweden hopes to gather like-minded liberal EU countries to boost their position in the bloc (Photo: EUobserver)

Sweden wants to boost the liberal economic stance of the EU by rallying pro-free trade countries against what Stockholm views as a "scary" rise of protectionism both within the 27-member bloc and outside its borders, the country's trade minister Ewa Bjorling has said.

"We have seen more and more EU countries getting together among the protectionists. It's scary for us as the watchdogs of free trade," Ms Bjorling told Reuters on Monday (10 March) after a meeting of EU trade ministers.

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"We have to watch out, every day, and we need to have much tighter collaboration among liberal countries," she noted, adding that Sweden had already held talks with Germany, Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania about the project.

"We need to speak with one clear, strong voice as the protectionists have been doing," minister Bjorling remarked, although refusing to openly name countries she considers to be "protectionist".

The most obvious candidate for such a label appears to be France under president Nicolas Sarkozy who has several times criticised the pro-free trade stance of some EU officials.

"If others have the right to protect themselves against dumping, why not Europe? If other nations put industrial policies in place, why not Europe? If others defend their farmers, why shouldn't Europe defend its farmers?" he said before MEPs in Strasbourg last November.

Paris has previously sought to rally countries with the same views on the need to defend Europe's agriculture subsidies in world trade negotiations or on the bloc's anti-dumping rules.

But Germany - as the EU's biggest member state and exporter - has also several times joined forces with those countries seeking more protection for their industries in the face of foreign competitors, such as in case of the bloc's tariffs against Chinese light bulbs.

In this instance, the European Commission wanted to scrap the existing anti-dumping measure last year, but Berlin insisted on its prolongation due to concerns for Germany's key bulb producer Osram.

While acknowledging the pressure in Germany over similar issues, the Swedish trade minister told Reuters she still counted on the country's support for the pro-free trade camp, saying: "For Germany, you can see they have in their backbone a very liberal line."

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