The European Union and China are set to open talks on a new cooperation treaty in Beijing this week as part of a joint drive to forge closer political and economic ties.

Negotiations on the new accord will be opened by EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner who will be in Beijing from January 16-18 for talks with Chinese leaders. Ferrero-Waldner spoke to DW-Radio about the upcoming visit and the state of relations between the EU and China.

DW: How would you sum up the current state of relations between the EU and China?

Ferrero-Waldner: I would say that relations are very comprehensive and very important but we also see that in our trade cooperation agreement that we have from 1985, these strategic partnerships that we have today with China, this old agreement is no longer up to the job. This is the reason why during this trip my main purpose is to launch negotiations for the new partnership and cooperation agreement that will be much more comprehensive and which will build on this changing relationship that we have.

In real terms, what do you hope to achieve?

In real terms, I think it will be necessary to really agree on providing a comprehensive framework for the 22 sectors in which the EU and China are already holding dialogues, including energy, the environment, agriculture, transport, education, science and technology but also key issues such as sustainable development, migration and of course the international challenges we both face such as terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

On the topic of energy, China is a major global polluter. Is there an implicit message from the EU which is "you must change what you are doing"?

We already have a partnership on climate change with China since September 2005 as well as various action plans and memorandums of understanding where we touch upon clean coal, energy efficiency and renewable energies in general. But we think China is so big that whatever we do in reducing emissions could be offset by China. Therefore we think it is highly important that China take on our technologies. For instance, clean coal technology with carbon capture because China is currently bringing one coal fired power plant online every week. You can imagine what that means. Therefore we want to get China closely working together with us and we're taking the lead here.

What's in this for China?

I think China itself realizes more and more, and is interested in having a development in their industry that in the end does not jeopardize the environment. That is also in their interest.

Peter Dobbie interviewed Benita Ferrero-Waldner