A delegation of eight MEPs from the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee will travel to Beijing and Shanghai on 21 – 23 July for meetings with senior Chinese officials.
The visit will be led by the committee’s chair, David McAllister, and will include talks on the wider EU – China relationship and issues the EU considers strategically significant, including economic imbalances, Russia’s war against Ukraine, human rights in China, and security in the Indo-Pacific, the Parliament announced on Friday.
The delegation is also due to discuss areas of shared interest including multilateralism, international public health and climate diplomacy.
MEPs are scheduled to meet China’s foreign minister Wang Yi, the leadership of the National People’s Congress and its foreign affairs committee, and the International Department of the Communist Party of China.
They will also hold discussions with EU diplomatic missions in Beijing and with scholars at the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Tech and artificial intelligence on the Shanghai agenda
In Shanghai, the group plans meetings with municipal authorities and local technology companies, with talks expected to cover “tech sovereignty” and competition as well as global rules for artificial intelligence — meaning efforts to set shared international approaches to governing the technology — the Parliament said.
The delegation includes Engin Eroglu, chair of the European Parliament delegation for relations with China, and Hilde Vautmans, the Foreign Affairs Committee’s standing rapporteur on China, alongside five other MEPs.
The trip follows a visit to China by the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee in late March 2026, and comes after MEPs travelled to China in May for the 43rd EU-China Inter-Parliamentary Meeting.
