The European Union and China have agreed to enter three months of formal trade consultations in a bid to address the EU's €360 billion annual trade deficit with Beijing, the two sides announced in Brussels on 29 June. It marks the first joint EU-China trade statement in seven years, with talks to cover four areas: trade and investment rebalancing, export controls on rare earths, intellectual property rights, and World Trade Organization reform. EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič said he hopes dialogue will yield "tangible results" before a follow-up meeting in Beijing in October, warning that Europe "cannot afford to continue in the unsustainable growth of the trade deficit" — a gap that Eurostat (the EU's official statistics agency) estimates at roughly €1 billion per day.