The European Commission has parked efforts to ratify its highly controversial free trade deal with China just four months after the agreement was brokered with huge fanfare.

EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis told French newswire AFP yesterday the bloc had effectively “suspended” its efforts to get the deal through Parliament.

“We now in a sense have suspended… political outreach activities from the European Commission side,” Mr Dombrovskis said.

The move comes just a month ahead of US President Joe Biden’s first official visit to Brussels.

A spokeswoman for Mr Dombrovskis said the Commission had not made any formal decision to suspend the deal but had stopped promoting it politically.

The deal – which covers investment but not trade in goods – was agreed in principle last December.

MEPs have repeatedly said they will not ratify it because of China’s treatment of its Muslim Uyghur minority and its clampdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong. 

Ratification became next to impossible after a round of EU sanctions on China and Chinese counter-sanctions last month, which targeted EU institutions and politicians.

One of those caught up in the sanctions was German MEP Reinhard Bütikofer, chair of the European Parliament’s China delegation, who told this newspaper recently the deal was as “dead as a doornail”.

French MEP Nathalie Loiseau said yesterday the Commission was being realistic.

“The Commission is taking note of reality: the European Parliament is not ready to ratify a deal with China that still has room for improvement and in such a clearly negative climate,” she said on Twitter.

Mr Dombrovskis told the AFP that ratification “will depend really on how broader EU-China relations will evolve”.

“It’s clear in the current situation, with the EU sanctions in place against China and Chinese counter-sanctions in place, including against members of the European Parliament (that) the environment is not conducive for the ratification of the agreement,” he said.

The Commission says the deal will guarantee EU investors unprecedented access to Chinese energy, transport, telecoms and healthcare markets, while binding China to international standards on forced labour.

But its surprise signature late last December – right at the end of Germany’s six-month stint at the helm of the EU – was criticised by some, who said the bloc should have waited until Mr Biden took office.

Meanwhile, the US is increasingly adopting a harder line towards China.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken this weekend accused China of acting more aggressively abroad and more repressively at home.

The US also believes China has failed to protect American intellectual property, a key commitment in its Trump-era ‘Phase 1’ deal with China.

Ireland supported the deal, with the Government recently calling China a “critical market” for Irish food exports.

China is the fourth-largest destination for Irish food and drinks exports, which reached almost €1bn last year, and the second-largest market for dairy and pig meat.

Chinese investment in Ireland is also at record highs, jumping more than 50pc in 2019, according to law firm Baker McKenzie.