On Monday, a letter addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen landed with unusual weight. Its two signatories were not ordinary officials but the leaders of the European Union's two largest economies: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron. Their message was blunt. The tools Brussels currently holds against unfair trade practices, they argued, are no longer sufficient to protect European industry.

No country was named in the letter, but the timing made the target hard to miss. Maros Sefcovic, the EU's trade commissioner, is due in Beijing within days, and the bloc's trade deficit with China has become one of the most-cited figures in Brussels policy debates. European dependence on a small number of foreign suppliers for critical raw materials was singled out as a particular danger, alongside concerns about Washington's own tariff policy under President Donald Trump, whose unpredictability has unsettled exporters on both sides of the Atlantic. The two leaders asked for two specific changes.

One would push companies toward diversifying their supplier base, rather than relying on a single country for essential inputs. The other would let Brussels suspend a country's access to the European single market on an expedited basis, when, in their words, deliberate efforts to distort fair competition produce serious and systematic damage. Both men, who are each wrestling with sluggish growth and tight budgets at home, framed the issue as one of economic sovereignty rather than simple protectionism. Whether von der Leyen's commission moves as fast as Berlin and Paris want remains uncertain, especially with Sefcovic preparing to sit across the table from Chinese officials this week.