If a week is a long time in politics, after a bruising fortnight of wrestling with the world’s two superpowers, the European Union could be forgiven for thinking it has aged several decades. A bruising encounter over Russia with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi was followed by chaotic skirmishes on trade with the United States over the last week, as the EU scrambled to avoid being crushed between the duelling titans. The bad news for the bloc’s bureaucrats is that they may have an even trickier few weeks to navigate before they are sipping chilled rosé among the lavender fields of Provence on their notoriously long August holidays. On Monday, trade ministers will meet in Brussels to hash out a response to US President Donald Trump’s weekend announcement of a 30 per cent tariff on all EU-made goods, with pressure mounting on the European Commission to retaliate. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday that if no agreement was reached by August 1, the bloc must consider using its anti-coercion instrument, a powerful trade weapon that would allow it to block US services and digital exports. On Sunday, however, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU would “extend the suspension of our countermeasures till early August”. Next Sunday, EU leaders will head for Asia, where a stop at an expo in Osaka will be followed by an EU-Japan summit in Tokyo. From there they will fly to Beijing for an altogether more challenging affair. Last week in Brussels, it was hard to find any optimism among officials involved about the first EU-China summit in two years. “They’re tired of having the same discussions all over again,” said Nadine Godehardt, a China specialist at the German think tank, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, at an event in Paris. “These politicians have been discussing the same things for decades now, the same lists on the table.” A two-day summit has been condensed into one and plans for a second day in Hefei in Anhui province, where delegates were to tour a Volkswagen factory and meet business leaders, have been taken off the agenda. While there were rumours that day two was cancelled to punish the EU for not holding high-level trade talks before the summit, sources said the EU had been told that Premier Li Qiang could not be away from Beijing on July 25 for domestic reasons. A business round table will now take place on the margins of the summit and the postponed economic talks could take place afterwards, but only if there is progress on trade. Chinese President Xi Jinping will co-chair the first part of the summit, which will involve thorny political discussions alongside European Commission chief von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa, followed by a banquet lunch. Trade will be covered in an afternoon session with Li, followed by a second banquet, before the EU leaders jet back to Brussels. But there would be no joint statement and few major deliverables were expected, diplomats said. On trade, this could change if Beijing accepts the EU’s terms for a price undertaking agreement on electric vehicles. The Europeans also hope for a structural solution to Chinese curbs on rare earths, but are realistic about the prospects. The summit is now seen as a chance to deliver grievances directly to Xi, who they say rarely hears Europe’s views unfiltered. They are willing to accept criticism for travelling to Beijing, despite it being Europe’s turn to host the event, to give him their unvarnished views. Even if nothing is achieved, the hawkish von der Leyen could tell member states calling for her to engage with China that that particular avenue had been exhausted. She could feasibly then steer China policy in a more assertive direction, insiders believe. In an uncompromising speech to the European Parliament last week, she called on Europe to “speed up with de-risking”. The dismal outlook feels a far cry from a couple of months ago, when the EU – at least publicly – viewed relations with both the US and China differently. On May 6, EU leaders exchanged glowing letters with Xi, pledging deeper ties on the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations and generating some faintly positive mood music after years of squabbling. Two days later, senior EU officials were slamming Britain for agreeing to a flimsy trade deal with the US, saying their own deal, when it came, would remove all “reciprocal tariffs”. With the US and China focused on their own tussle, Europe felt it had leverage over both, while talk of greater European independence was encouraged by von der Leyen. “A new international order will emerge in this decade,” she said in May. “If we do not want to simply accept the consequences this will have for Europe and the world, we must shape this new order. History does not forgive either dithering or delaying. Our mission is European independence.” In the ensuing weeks, however, both powers turned the screws on Europe while trying to cool down their own dispute. On Friday, EU officials were still expecting to make a trade deal with Trump, only for him to announce 30 per cent duties the following day – adding that they would rise in line with any European retaliation. Meanwhile, European firms have felt the bite of export licensing requirements for rare earths that left the EU powerless to respond. As juggernauts to its west and east delivered haymakers in a no-holds-barred slugfest, the EU has thumbed its notebook like a librarian in a war zone. Suddenly, European independence seems a long way off. “For China and the US under Trump, they have the same perception of Europe – we are irrelevant, we are not important,” Justyna Szczudlik, head of the Asia programme at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, told an Asia Society event in Paris. When the US and China secured a stopgap deal in Geneva in May to calm their spiralling trade war, Europeans noticed a change in Beijing’s tone. Having secured a climbdown from Trump, Beijing felt it could “push Europe around”, according to one official involved. Vice-Premier He Lifeng travelled directly from Geneva to Paris for talks with French officials that turned out to be “terrible”, according to another. Talks between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas this month went equally badly. Wang took issue with her constant prodding on Russia, according to people familiar with the exchange, and flipped. During a long lecture, he told her China did not want Moscow to lose the war because the US would then turn its full focus to Asia. A meeting that was supposed to set the political agenda for the summit may now have set a combative tone. Europe’s friendly language has gone too. At the Group of 7 meeting in Canada last month, von der Leyen – in the same room as Trump – took Beijing to task for its rare earth controls. “We all witnessed the cost and consequences of China’s coercion through export restrictions,” she said. Few in Brussels were surprised by her comments, but eyebrows were raised when she chose to publish a closed-door speech from a meeting where no other leader went public. Observers suggested Xi’s relative success in managing the trade war with the US had inspired a harder line towards Europe, in the expectation that it would not punch back – at least not where it hurts. “I think China’s trade-off between sticks and carrots is that if you’re strong, I give you carrots. If you’re weak, like Europe, I give you sticks,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, Asia-Pacific economist at the financial services firm Natixis, speaking at the same Paris event. After several rounds of postponed EU retaliation against the US, Trump may have reached the same conclusion. All eyes are on whether the bloc punches back on Monday. “We have many tools, but we really are afraid of using them. We have this anti-coercion instrument – it’s a very good instrument, but we are scared to use it,” Szczudlik said. During a press briefing last week, one senior diplomat was stumped when a journalist asked, “Where did the self-confidence go?” Instead, the mood in Brussels has turned to damage control. “We’ve been asked to stop the bleeding,” an EU official said of the US on Friday, in remarks that could equally apply to China. “A small pool of blood is now seen to be better than a big one.”