Sun Huaibin, spokesman for the China Textile Industry Council, on Friday expressed welcome to the ongoing China-EU talks on Chinese textile products blocked at the customs in EU countries.

The current Sino-EU trade consultation in Beijing is an urgent contact between the two sides to solve internal market crises in the European Union, Sun told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

Currently, millions of dollars-worth of clothing items shipped from China to Europe in excess of their quotas have been blocked at customs of some European countries.

China and EU reached an agreement this June, setting new quotas on ten categories of textile products from China. But the quotas have been filled rapidly as many EU importers and retailers had ordered large quantity of goods from China several months before the new quotas were set.

The EU is under fierce pressure from fashion importers and European retailers to review quotas.

On Wednesday an EU trade team headed by Fritz-Harald Wenig arrived in Beijing to try to resolve the problem of Chinese textile exports blocked at the customs in EU countries.

Both Lu Jianhua, director of the Foreign Trade Department of China's Ministry of Commerce, and Fritz-Harald Wenig, had "earnest negotiations" over the issue, the ministry said in a statement late Thursday.

"This shows under conditions of free trade, it is unreasonable to adjust international trade though quota limit, a kind of factitious method of planning," Sun said.

"The negotiation itself indicates that trade quota is a double-edge sword, which can not only refrain export, but do harm to importers as well," he said.  

(Xinhua News Agency August 27, 2005)