EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said on Saturday the bloc's deal with China over Chinese textile exports showed the virtue of free trade but also the necessity to intervene to soften transition phases. The 25-member bloc and China on Friday clinched a deal limiting the rise in Chinese exports of textiles and clothing to the EU until the end of 2008, averting the imposition of quotas that could have soured ties.
"It proves the virtue of free trade and the opening of markets in trade matters, but also the necessity to intervene to soften phases of transition and economic changes, particularly on the social side," Mandelson told French daily Le Monde.
"The accord does not aim at protecting European industrialists at all costs, but to give them a bit of time to adapt in the most sensitive categories," he said.
"The accord also allows to support developing countries, whose exports towards the Union have suffered the consequences of the explosion in volumes coming from China."
Mandelson and Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai reached the deal in Shanghai after months of tension over an explosive rise in shipments of cheap exports from China. The EU feared the leap in exports threatened its garment industry and jobs.
The rise was unleashed by the January 1 abolition of a decades-old global system of quotas.
Resorting to terms agreed when China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001, the United States has already slapped temporary restrictions on seven garment and textile products, provoking an angry reaction from Beijing.
Before the agreement was signed, the EU was due to also limit shipments of Chinese T-shirts and flax yarn to 7.5 percent over the previous year.
"The search for a negotiated deal was the best approach," Mandelson said. "Coercive measures would have limited the possibility of such a compromise," he said.
"Doing nothing would have fed protectionist tendencies in Europe, while creating tensions in the relations between the Union and China," Mandelson told Le Monde in an interview.