Tougher

Published on
07/10/2026 – 17:07 GMT+2

The European Parliament has called for tougher action against China’s economic coercion and support for Russia, warning that relations with Beijing have reached a “critical point”.

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MEPs backed the resolution by a landslide on Wednesday, urging the EU to consider deploying its powerful Anti-Coercion Instrument if Beijing weaponises Europe’s dependence on critical raw materials.

The vote came as EU Trade Chief Maroš Šefčovič was flying to Beijing for crunch talks aimed at rebalancing the increasingly strained trade relationship.

October is shaping up to be a crucial month for EU-China relations. EU leaders, whose countries now all run trade deficits with China, are pressing the European Commission to deliver concrete results from negotiations with Beijing.

Tensions also extend well beyond trade. The EU has become increasingly alarmed by Beijing’s close relationship with Moscow and its role in sustaining Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“The relations have now reached a critical point, mostly due to China’s unfair economic practices such as dumping and spying and its position on Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” the resolution adopted by EU lawmakers reads.

The text was backed by 454 MEPs, with 86 voting against and 110 abstaining.

Lawmakers described China’s role in the Ukraine war as that of “a decisive enabler”, pointing to “Chinese diplomatic backing and material assistance that sustains the Russian military-industrial complex”.

Pressure to use anti-coercion tool

They also call on EU countries and the Commission to “urgently” take action on “the weaponisation of critical dependencies by China.”

Europe felt the vulnerability of those dependencies in 2025, when China restricted exports of rare earths, which are vital to the EU’s automotive, defence and clean-tech industries, amid its escalating trade war with the United States.

The MEPs said the EU should consider using the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI) when China instrumentalises such EU dependencies.

The ACI is an EU mechanism that allows the bloc to adopt radical measures – up to restrictions on licences and intellectual property rights – against a third country that uses economic coercion against the EU.

China’s dominance of the production and processing of strategic raw materials has become a major sticking point in trade negotiations, giving Beijing considerable leverage as Brussels seeks to curb its dependence on Chinese imports.

A Commission proposal pushing companies to diversify their suppliers in strategic sectors is in the making and should be presented by the end of the year.

The resolution comes two days after Germany and France harden their stancetowards Beijing, calling for a new trade tool that could allow the Commission to impose measures leading to “an immediate cut-off from the internal market if needed”.

A day after unveiling Pontes, its system for settling tokenised assets in central bank money, the ECB has set out how it wants Europe’s crypto rulebook rewritten.

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The response, published on Tuesday by the European System of Central Banks, which groups the ECB with the EU’s national central banks, argues for tougher rules on stablecoins, staking and crypto firms.

It feeds into the European Commission’s review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, known as MiCA, the EU’s rulebook for cryptocurrencies and the firms that trade them.

MiCA has applied since December 2024, and the last transitional deadline for existing operators expired on 1 July, including Binance, the world’s largest exchange, to stop serving European customers.

The Commission’s consultation will close on 30 September, a month later than planned.

The central banks’ recommendations are not binding, and the Commission will weigh them alongside other responses before deciding whether to reopen the law.

EU diplomats have told Euronews they expect a revision in 2027, which would need the approval of the European Parliament and member states.

No interest and no loopholes

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to hold a steady value, usually by tracking the US dollar.

MiCA already bars both issuers and crypto exchanges from paying interest on them, and the central banks want it kept that way.

“The payment of stablecoin remuneration should continue to be prohibited,” the ECB response says.

Their targets are the workarounds. Some exchanges, the response notes, offer crypto lending, borrowing and staking, “thereby replicating the economic effect of interest payments through ancillary or unregulated services.”

The central banks want the ban extended to those activities and to indirect rewards, such as certain loyalty-programme benefits, calling it “a clear legislative priority”.

Washington has gone the other way.

The 2025 GENIUS Act banned US stablecoin issuers from paying interest but left exchanges free to offer rewards, and whether to close that gap became one of the most contested fights over the CLARITY Act, the landmark crypto bill that fell ten votes short in the US Senate on 15 September.

A brake on US dollar stablecoins

The central banks want stronger tools against tokens pegged to foreign currencies.

It would be useful, they say, if authorities could impose “a prohibition to issue new tokens, as well as an obligation to redeem existing tokens” on issuers where central banks judge that the tokens pose a threat, including to financial stability.

More broadly, they see limited benefit in stablecoins for everyday payments at home, given instant bank transfers and the planned digital euro. They warn that MiCA provides no legal basis for issuing the same stablecoin both inside and outside the EU.

In a bank run, European reserves could end up paying holders elsewhere, while “EU authorities cannot determine with certainty how many tokens are held within the Union.”

Eurozone central banks also do not currently let stablecoin issuers hold customer funds with them.

A token fully backed by central bank money, the response warns, “would effectively result in a ‘synthetic’ central bank digital currency” that is essentially a private imitation of the digital euro and could, in theory, drain deposits from commercial banks, especially under stress.

Staking and decentralised finance

On staking, where users lock up crypto in exchange for rewards, the response is blunt: “Staking, lending and borrowing of crypto-assets should be regulated at Union level.”

Where a firm takes customers’ crypto and promises to return it, potentially with a premium, the central banks argue that the arrangement can be “comparable to the taking of repayable funds”, in the language of banking.

The same applies to decentralised finance, or DeFi, where lending and trading run on automated software rather than through a company.

MiCA exempts fully decentralised services but never defines the term, and the central banks cite studies showing that full decentralisation is rarely, if ever, achieved, leaving it unclear who is in control.

Who licenses crypto exchanges?

The central banks also back a Commission proposal to move licensing and supervision of crypto firms from national regulators to ESMA, the EU’s markets watchdog.

Currently, one national licence covers the whole bloc, which was the route Binance originally pursued in Greece.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week, citing people familiar with the discussions, that ECB President Christine Lagarde urged Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis not to approve Binance’s application because of the exchange’s past compliance problems and fears that its scale could deepen the use of US dollar stablecoins in Europe.

A senior Greek regulator, according to the newspaper, told the exchange that Lagarde wanted the decision delayed until ESMA took over, the same shift the central banks endorse in Tuesday’s response. Binance withdrew the application on 24 June.

Neither the ECB nor the Greek regulator has confirmed the account. The ECB, which has no formal role in licensing crypto firms, declined to comment, while Binance said it would “not comment on speculation”.