On January 7, a trade delegation consisting of 17 management representatives from 33 enterprises was ready to go to the EU countries to look for orders. Moreover, another 100-odd management representatives will join them in Europe soon.

Cao Guoping, Director of the European and American Affairs Division of the Department of Commerce of Shandong Province, said that this trip to the EU countries is different from the economic and trade promotion trip to Japan and South Korea. This time, the EU-bound economic and trade promotion team is divided into the trade delegation and the investment promotion delegation. Notably, a total of 168 management representatives from 101 foreign trade enterprises in Shandong Province—mainly in the fields of textile, medical care, machinery, electronics and electrical appliances, food, etc.—applied for participating in the trade delegation.

For Shandong, the EU is not only an important economic and trade partner, but also a major export market and foreign investor. Now, this supranational political and economic union has become Shandong's third largest trading partner and export market. From January to November last year, the total trade volume between Shandong and the EU was 265.49 billion yuan, up 1.9 percent; the paid-in EU investment was USD 376 million, up 25 percent. Besides, there are more than 1,000 EU-invested enterprises in the province, with the combined paid-in foreign investment exceeding USD 5 billion.