German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron sent a joint letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday calling for two new trade defense instruments. The first would force supply-chain diversification to reduce dependency on individual-country suppliers. The second — and far more consequential — would allow the Commission to exclude a third country from European single market access on an expedited basis under "exceptional circumstances," without needing prior approval from member states. The letter names no country, but the targets are obvious. The EU's trade deficit with China hit approximately €360 billion in 2025 by EU calculations ($292 billion by Beijing's count). European industry remains critically dependent on Chinese rare earths and increasingly reliant on both US and Chinese high-tech imports, particularly in computing and AI. The timing is pointed: EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic visits Beijing this week, ahead of an EU leaders' summit on October 15-16. The procedural shift is the real story. Currently, excluding a country from single market access requires member state approval — a slow, politically fraught process. Merz and Macron want to flip the default: the Commission would act first, and member states would need a qualified majority (55% of states representing 65% of population) to block it afterward. This transforms the Commission from a body that requests permission into one that acts unless stopped. The letter is technically a "non-paper" — EU diplomatic jargon for an informal, nonbinding discussion document that lets leaders float proposals without official commitment. But Franco-German non-papers have a way of becoming EU policy. When Berlin and Paris align on trade architecture, smaller member states that depend on Chinese trade or investment face pressure to fall in line rather than assemble a blocking coalition. The language of the letter frames the problem in industrial-sovereignty terms: "systemic market-distorting practices," "global macroeconomic imbalances," threats to Europe's position as a "sovereign core industrial producer." This framing does real work — it positions trade defense not as protectionism but as sovereignty protection, making opposition politically costly. Both leaders face domestic economic pressure. Merz is navigating German industrial anxiety about Chinese competition and supply-chain fragility. Macron continues to struggle with growth and public spending constraints. A muscular EU trade posture serves both leaders domestically, allowing them to point to Brussels as the actor while sharing the diplomatic cost of confrontation with Beijing. Beijing has already signaled it could retaliate if it perceives the EU's plans as hostile. Sefcovic said earlier this year he hoped for "tangible results by October" on China trade questions, but whether that optimism survives this week's visit is now genuinely uncertain. The risk is a familiar one: Europe strengthens its defensive tools while remaining unable to replace the supply chains those tools threaten to disrupt.
