EU Mulls Curbs On China’s Medical Device Market

The European Union has considered backing a proposal to limit Chinese medical device suppliers’ participation in bids for public contracts, after finding member states’ companies were not given fair access to China’s public tenders.

The measures proposed on June 2 by the European Commission will be the first under the EU’s International Procurement Instrument (IPI) regulation, adopted in 2022, which aims to ensure fair access for European companies to other countries’ public contracts.

The European Commission, the 27-member bloc’s executive body, launched an investigation in April into China’s medical devices market amid claims of unfair practices.

The EU could now curb Chinese manufacturers’ access to public procurement contracts worth more than 5 million euros ($5.4 million).

The European Commission confirmed it put a proposal to EU members on Monday, but said it could not disclose the outcome of the vote, the content of its proposal, or its next steps.

Olof Gill, the commission spokesperson for trade, told The Epoch Times by email, “The internal procedures related to this investigation are ongoing and the commission at this stage cannot disclose details about the result of the comitology process, next steps or the content of the draft IPI measure.”

In a statement released on Tuesday on social media platform X, the China Chamber of Commerce to the EU said the plan risks “escalating tensions and damaging trust.”

EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic was due to meet Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in Paris on Tuesday, according to Sefcovic’s agenda.

After a months-long investigation, the EU said in January it found “clear evidence” that the Chinese regime limited the access of European medical device producers to its government contracts “in an unfair and discriminatory way.”

In a report released on Jan. 14, the commission outlined its investigators’ findings, revealing that the Chinese regime has implemented a multilayered system of legal measures and policies that favor domestic medical device manufacturers over foreign competitors.

The EU’s investigators found that Beijing also established a procurement system that incentivizes companies to win tenders by offering prices that are often unsustainable for profit-driven foreign firms.

China’s state support for local medical manufacturers enables it to offer even lower bids, according to the report.

In some cases, the commission found that such state support leads to price cuts exceeding 90 percent, effectively pushing foreign companies out of the market.

“The commission has reached the conclusion that the measures and practices identified in the course of the investigation, put in place by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] with respect to the procurement of medical devices, exist and are applied across the entire territory of the PRC,” the commission stated in the report.

The European Chamber of Commerce in China, in its report published in 2023, stated that about 80 percent of EU medical firms operating in China complained about a worsening business environment in the country.

“For the medical devices industry, this was in no small part due to China’s staunch protection of its domestic firms,” the report said.

“European companies were disadvantaged by opaque approval processes and China’s centralized volume-based procurement directive, as well as the government’s continued provision of direct financial support, tax benefits, and research and development (R&D) support to local firms.”

In October 2024, member states of the EU voted to tariff Chinese electric vehicles (EVs).

In September 2023, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen cautioned that the global market is “flooded with cheaper electric vehicles” and that the prices are kept “artificially low by huge state subsidies.”

In April, the EU and China agreed to explore minimum pricing of Chinese-made EVs in place of tariffs.

Dorothy Li, Aaron Pan, and Reuters contributed to this report.