Lithuania’s 2027 Council Presidency: China’s Routes of Pressure

The Missing Diplomatic Infrastructure

The Council Presidency’s formal role is essentially to plan, coordinate and chair meetings, represent the Council, negotiate with the other institutions, communicate about its activities, and broker compromises among Member States. Beyond these functions, the presiding state can also draw on its own national diplomatic capacities, namely its embassy, reporting lines and bilateral channels, to support its coordination and brokering efforts. These capacities complement the work of the High Representative, the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the Commission, and, in practice, serve at least three functions.

First, they act as a sensor, providing an independent national read of the other side: what officials convey through diplomatic contacts, how particular messages are received, and what informal exchanges reveal about the other country’s interests and red lines. Second, they serve as a sounding channel, allowing the Presidency to gauge how the other country might react to a given policy idea or formulation before it hardens into a formal position. Third, they function as a release valve, helping to detect early signs of retaliation and, in coordination with the EEAS, to contain or de-escalate disputes before they spill over into wider EU business.

Each of these functions presupposes both a working bilateral channel and the political will to use it. Where such a channel is absent, as it currently is for Lithuania, the Presidency retains its formal institutional functions but is deprived of an important layer of the diplomatic infrastructure that can support them.

The 2013 Precedent: Two Tracks, One Presidency

To understand how the Presidency’s formal role interacts with China-related files, and how it operates alongside functioning diplomatic relations, it is useful to look back to Lithuania’s first Council Presidency, in the second half of 2013 (July–December). During its Presidency, Lithuania inherited an EU-China file that was already well advanced. In 2012, the EU and China had agreed to launch negotiations on a bilateral investment agreement[1], and in May 2013, before Lithuania took the Chair, the Commission had submitted its recommendation for a negotiating mandate. The Presidency’s task was therefore to chair the Council’s consideration of that recommendation which culminated in October 2013, when the Council adopted the mandate, and the launch of negotiations was announced at the 16^th EU-China Summit in Beijing on November 21, 2013. This sequence illustrates the limited and procedural nature of the Presidency’s institutional role. Although Lithuania chaired the relevant Council discussions, it neither shaped EU-China policy nor conducted the negotiations themselves, which remained the responsibility of the Commission.

The formal role, however, was only one of two tracks on which Lithuania operated in 2013. Its Council Presidency ran alongside a separate and functioning bilateral relationship with China, creating a dual-track structure: Beijing could engage directly with the Lithuanian government while Lithuania carried out its Presidency responsibilities. The coexistence of these two tracks was put to the test in September 2013, when President Dalia Grybauskaitė met the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama in Vilnius in a private capacity. The meeting prompted a sharp reaction from Beijing, which considers Tibet an integral part of its territory. China cancelled a planned visit by its Vice-Minister of Commerce, while bilateral sectoral dialogues were frozen for around two years. Yet the deterioration in bilateral relations did not prevent the EU-level process from moving forward, suggesting that the two tracks could remain institutionally distinct even when bilateral tensions escalated.

This is where the 2013 precedent becomes most relevant to 2027. In 2013, Beijing had a functioning bilateral channel through which it could engage with, and put pressure on, Lithuania while it held the Presidency, allowing bilateral tensions to be managed, at least in part, through a direct state-to-state relationship. Today, however, Lithuania’s lack of diplomatic relations with China and of a resident mission in Beijing means there is no formal channel of this kind. Yet such a channel is not inherently an instrument of accommodation: in the current bilateral climate it could serve as much to apply pressure as to defuse tensions. Its absence therefore cuts both ways. It deprives Vilnius of a direct means of gauging and assuaging Beijing’s reactions, while denying Beijing a direct conduit for leverage. Nonetheless, and fundamentally, this does not make pressure less likely, as it changes the routes Beijing can take to exert it.

Beijing’s Routes of Pressure

The first route would be for China to bypass Lithuania as the presiding Member State altogether. With no embassy and no functioning channel in Vilnius, China has no institutional interlocutor and little reason to treat Lithuania as the natural point of contact on the China-related files it will chair. Beijing may therefore have a strong preference to engage other EU capitals, the EEAS or the Commission directly, particularly on files it regards as a compounded threat to its national development interests, from trade defence instruments and export controls to sanctions and de-risking measures. The Presidency could thus be sidelined on the very files it chairs: Vilnius would retain the chair and the agenda but might learn of Beijing’s positions only second-hand and find itself brokering compromises already settled elsewhere, undermining its role as an honest broker.

The second route builds on the first. Having bypassed Vilnius, Beijing could work through other Member States instead. It could draw on its bilateral relations with countries that have large economic exposure to and dependency on China or are broadly China-friendly to press Lithuania indirectly on the files where its interests are greatest. Pressure to compromise in the name of Council unity is a standing feature of any Presidency, but Beijing could exploit it by tacitly encouraging Member States to push Vilnius to soften its stance, without applying any direct pressure itself. Because the Presidency’s authority rests on being seen as an honest broker, this could prove effective: a chair that appears to obstruct consensus risks its credibility. The cost to Vilnius would thus be strained relations with those states if it were seen to stand in the way of agreement.

Both routes could play out on several China-relevant files that are at early or middle stages of negotiation and are likely to carry over into the Lithuanian Presidency. Three carry particular salience: the revised Cybersecurity Act[2] (CSA2), the Industrial Accelerator Act[3] (IAA), and the Public Procurement Act[4], most recently published on 9 September. Each addresses a distinct vulnerability arising from the EU’s dependence on Chinese technology and industrial capacity, and together they form part of a broader effort to strengthen European production and diversify supply chains.

These files have already drawn sharp criticism from Beijing. Senior Chinese officials, including top diplomat Wang Yi and Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, have raised the IAA and CSA2 in high-level exchanges with EU representatives, characterising the measures as discriminatory and protectionist and warning of retaliation should Brussels proceed. Such unequivocal responses suggest that these files could well be the ones on which both routes are brought into play during the Lithuanian Presidency. Nonetheless, the precise procedural stage at which Vilnius inherits them will depend on how far negotiations advance under the current Irish Presidency, which concludes in December.

Lithuania’s Bilateral Interests as Leverage

The third route turns Lithuania’s own bilateral interests into leverage. Beijing could make any movement on Lithuania’s current interest in restoring diplomatic channels premised, explicitly or implicitly, on restraint in precisely those files it regards as an infringement on its interests. What is, in effect, an operational deficit for Vilnius could thus become a bargaining chip for Beijing. A conciliatory posture from Vilnius is nonetheless unlikely: in June 2026, Lithuania joined the French-led non-paper urging a tougher trade strategy towards China, and enhancing EU competitiveness is among its stated Presidency priorities.

Where such linkage would take effect first is uncertain, since it remains unclear how far existing and forthcoming files will have progressed by January. However, Vilnius’s most immediate exposure to Beijing arguably lies in RELEX, the Council working party responsible for drafting the legal texts underpinning EU restrictive measures, which Lithuania will chair from January.

Since 2023, successive Russia-sanctions packages negotiated in this working party have listed Chinese and Hong Kong entities for circumventing export controls, and Beijing has retaliated swiftly each time. The most recent case was its response to the 21^st sanctions package, which listed 14 Chinese and Hong Kong companies for helping Russia source microelectronics, machine tools and chipmaking equipment. Beijing responded in kind, adding 14 EU firms involved in European defence-capability building to its own export-control list and barring Chinese suppliers from selling them dual-use goods. Among those targeted was Lithuania’s own laser manufacturer, Ekspla.

This precedent points to a tangible risk of Chinese pressure once Lithuania chairs RELEX. Future listings of additional Chinese and Hong Kong entities could furnish Beijing with ready-made grounds for targeting Lithuanian firms in response. The scale and form of any such retaliation would likely track the scope of the measures adopted: narrower listings might elicit a limited response, whereas broader packages would carry a greater risk of reciprocal measures.

The Limits of Beijing’s Influence

The prospect of China’s pressure flowing through alternative routes should not, however, obscure the other side of the equation. The absence of a bilateral channel does not operate solely to Lithuania’s disadvantage: it also denies Beijing a direct institutional conduit for routine diplomatic pressure on Vilnius. Without an embassy and a functioning channel, China cannot readily rely on formal démarches, informal warnings or the selective management of diplomatic contacts to shape Lithuania’s positions. Any such pressure would have to be channelled through other Member States or EU institutions, or else be exerted openly, at the price of unwanted political visibility and reputational costs for Beijing.

Open pressure of this kind could, in turn, draw other Member States closer to Lithuania’s firm stance on economic security. Beijing would also forfeit the low-cost, relatively discreet leverage that a functioning bilateral relationship affords. The absence of bilateral relations therefore narrows Lithuania’s room for manoeuvre in some respects, while limiting the most direct means by which Beijing could seek to influence it.

The EU-China Factor

The broader trajectory of EU-China economic relations must also be factored in when assessing how Beijing’s alternative routes of influence might play out, as it further shapes both the incentives for Beijing to exploit them and the constraints under which it would do so. Recent months have arguably been the most consequential for the relationship in decades. The EU’s widening trade deficit with China, coupled with Beijing’s apparent confidence that its leverage over rare earths and permanent magnets, alongside its success in withstanding US pressure, allows it to resist significant concessions to Europe, has brought the two sides close to a full-blown trade war.

Yet a series of developments in October, widely characterised as a “make-or-break” moment for EU-China relations, has, at least for now, opened a path away from that outcome.  On October 8-9, European Commissioner for Trade Maroš Šefčovič travelled to Beijing for the second round of Trade and Investment Consultations. The resulting agreementincluded measures to curb[5] the surge in Chinese hybrid-vehicle exports to the EU, alongside tariff relief for European exports to China and the continued issuance of export licences for rare earths. The outcome represents a meaningful, albeit partial, easing of trade tensions and a modest win for Europe: Beijing opted for compromise over confrontation, signalling a willingness to address trade imbalances without first triggering a wider escalation. At the same time, it also suggests that the EU’s tougher line is working, particularly following Germany’s[6] shift towards a more assertive stance on China. Notably, this shift was reflected in the Franco-German joint letter sent to Brussels on October 5, which proposed a powerful new trade instrument that would allow the EU to cut off market access within days for coercive countries, chiefly China, deemed to have severely distorted the single market.

Against this backdrop, Beijing may have expected the agreement to placate European capitals and forestall more far-reaching trade measures. Instead, the deal appears to have reinforced the momentum behind a tougher EU approach. At the European Council meeting on October 15-16, EU leaders signalled further support for strengthening the Union’s trade-defence capabilities, backing the development of new measures, including the proposed DiversifyEU[7] instrument and a solidarity mechanism[8], both expected to be presented as early as this December. Moreover, the Franco-German “kill switch” proposal was endorsed, paving the way for the swift and decisive restriction of access to the EU’s single market. Together, these developments suggest that the EU regards China’s concession in a single sector as insufficient for a broader rebalancing, and wants a stronger, more systematic set of instruments. Moreover, they also point to a degree of European unity on China not seen in years, suggesting that the EU is better positioned to secure favourable outcomes when it wields its market access leverage collectively.

Conclusion

When Lithuania assumes the Council presidency in January 2027, it will face a more contested China-related economic-security agenda than any of its predecessors, compounded by an unprecedented diplomatic handicap. The absence of bilateral diplomatic relations alters the routes through which Beijing is likely to exert pressure, while the broader trajectory of EU–China relations determines its incentives to use them, the costs of doing so and the likelihood of success.

That trajectory is now increasingly shaped by a growing European resolve, which further complicates Beijing’s strategic calculus over which routes to pursue and how far to pursue them. China retains significant escalation dominance and opportunities to exploit divisions among Member States. Yet the costs of applying pressure could rise as the EU strengthens its capacity to address trade imbalances and counter economic coercion collectively. Should the expected costs come to outweigh the potential gains, Beijing may be deterred from overt retaliation and find indirect pressure less attractive. Greater resolve, however, carries its own risks: Beijing could read new EU trade measures as a deliberate rebuff to the October agreement and respond with retaliation rather than restraint, swiftly returning relations to confrontation.The challenge for the EU is therefore to sustain Member State unity, to demonstrate a credible willingness to deploy its collective economic leverage, and to respond nimbly to Chinese pressure without triggering a renewed cycle of escalation.

For Vilnius, the task will be to steer the Council through this increasingly fraught agenda while preserving both European cohesion and the room for manoeuvre needed to manage the risks of Chinese pressure. Ultimately, the environment in which Vilnius presides will be shaped by the interaction between the absence of its diplomatic ties with Beijing and the broader state of EU-China relations, which together will determine the routes Beijing chooses, the leverage it can bring to bear and the limits of its influence.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of GSSC.