BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The de-risking that the EU seeks to reach in the relationship with China is mainly a job for companies and not so much for countries, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday.
“De-risking is not a short-term project as it is mainly about decisions that need to be taken by companies,” he told reporters after a two-day EU summit in Brussels.
Scholz said that, in the past, companies too often had taken major risks as they chose to rely on only one supplier, no matter where it was located.
“It is about not putting all eggs into one basket…This is what they (the companies) are doing now, they have long started this process,” he added. “This is not in the first place up to the state, because we don’t tell them where to invest.”
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold)