“The world doesn’t need another trade war. The world doesn’t need more geopolitical conflicts,” Jorge Toledo, the EU’s ambassador to China, said in Beijing on Friday.
“We have a special responsibility in the European Union and in China to stabilise, rebalance and improve our relationships, and not to add more problems to the already very troubled waters that we are witnessing,” Toledo said at a conference hosted by the Centre for China and Globalisation, a Beijing-based think tank.
But debates over the effectiveness of existing multilateral platforms go back further, with the failure of institutions such as the United Nations to address a range of crises, from the devastating impacts of climate change to the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan.
Smaller or developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America have also complained about the lack of representation on international platforms.