A few days ago the British-based Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, founder of the famous company ArcelorMittal, urged the EU to protect itself against China imports. According to a Financial Times article, Mittal suggested that Europe should embrace protectionist measures to stop Chinese products flooding the market with cheap goods.

However, protectionism could be a lethal weapon for Europe in this moment.

A recent report published by the EU Commission argues that China has become one of the EU's fastest growing export markets.

The document also underlines that China and Europe now trade well over €1 billion a day ($1.3 billion), mainly thanks to the cooperation project known as EUCTP II, which stated that from 2010 to 2015 Europe should support the Chinese government's trade reforms and sustainable development agenda to promote fair competition and value for consumers, facilitate harmonization with international standards and promote safe products.

China is now the EU's second trading partner, behind the US, and the EU is China's biggest trading partner.

Europe is a sort of geoeconomic pivot between the US and China, as it was between the US and the Soviet Union from a geostrategic perspective during the Cold War. The transit from military confrontation to economic competition shows that the historic conditions are completely different from the past, but Europe can play a role of power balancing again.

Nonetheless, is the EU a stable partner? Since the beginning of the economic crisis, the deep distance between North Atlantic countries and Mediterranean countries is day by day more evident.

Germany, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries are in a completely different situation than Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain.

France, just partially in crisis, is in the middle and tries to exploit its specific position to promote itself as an intermediary between North Europe, still relatively wealthy, and South Europe, in a panic characterized by austerity, recession and unemployment.

However, the political, juridical and artistic culture of modern Europe is greatly in debt toward the historical heritage of Rome and Greece and, in general, the Mediterranean form of civilization well described by the geographer Ferdinand Braudel.

On the one side, the Strait of Gibraltar encases its maritime space as a door where ancient poets once placed the last border of the known world in their times, the famous Columns of Hercules.

On the other side, through the straits of the Dardanelles, the Bosphorus and Kerch, Mediterranean waters meet the Black Sea and Azov Sea, opening a very important door toward the East especially if we consider that Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan now compose one huge common economic space.

Moreover, the Mediterranean Sea was also the last stage of the legendary Silk Road that once facilitated trade between Europe and Asia, bringing Chinese goods as far as Britain and France.

Today the Mediterranean Sea could play a role in the promotion for partnership and dialogue between the West and the East. 

During the 2011 Libyan crisis, a Chinese warship entered into the sea for the first time in history, sent to protect and bring back home almost 36,000 Chinese workers.

This event has been underlined by European press, and some observers have noticed how China has rapidly become a power able to protect and defend its interests all over the world.

But almost no one seemed to be able to see beyond this single episode and understand that a new era of dialogue and mutual comprehension should begin.

The Silk Road has never disappeared, it's just hidden by prejudice. The origins of recession lie in the EU itself, not in Chinese "unfair competition."

The author is a journalist and foreign affairs analyst based in Perugia, Italy. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn