Chinese EV makers risk tougher duties over failure to cooperate with EU probe – POLITICO

The three letters outline how the Commission requested information on the company’s operations, sales projections and their supplies. One recurring complaint is that the three companies kept claiming supplying companies didn’t need to fill out a subsidy questionnaire.

In the case of SAIC, Brussels already sent a letter in December complaining about the lack of cooperation. “Nevertheless, your client maintained its approach and continued to refuse access to some key information,” the letter seen by POLITICO reminds the lawyers for SAIC.

The letter to SAIC is particularly testy: “Your client almost systematically presented requests for deadline extensions although it did not use this additional time to provide the necessary information requested by the Commission.”

Working together with Volkswagen since 1984, state-owned SAIC is intimately connected to Europe. Among the nine plants the joint venture operates is a controversial one in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government is believed to have interned over 1 million Uyghurs.

SAIC, according to the Commission, claimed that it could not control its suppliers — whose names are redacted in the letter — and therefore could not compel them to submit questionnaires on their “provision of capital, loans, guarantees, or any other types of financing.” The EU’s trade department also rejected the argument that such a survey would violate SAIC’s fundamental rights.

The Chinese company saw the consequences looming, and — the Commission alleges — argued that it had told Brussels enough.