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"The language on China certainly goes much further than anything NATO has said before,” Ian Bond, Director of Foreign Policy at the think tank the Centre for European Reform, told Euronews. “I think this does reflect an increasing realisation that China is developing in ways that we hadn’t hoped for and perhaps we didn’t expect a few years ago when the talk was of China becoming a responsible stakeholder in the international system.”

Zach Meyers, a research fellow with the Centre for European Reform think-tank, said the EU’s moves “are unlikely to work and could even dissuade countries from agreeing to the OECD package”.

"If the UK government is making hormone-treated beef a red line in negotiations with Australia, the US and other trade partners, this will provide some protection for British cattle farmers, who are not allowed to give their own animals hormones," said John Springford, from the Centre for European Reform.

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said France will use its EU presidency in the first half of next year ahead of the French presidential elections to "promote its ideas of Europe".

Sam Lowe, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform think-tank, described the UK-EEA deal as “necessary” and a “good thing” but said its success depended on the baseline of measurement. “If you are comparing it to normal free trade agreements, then it is certainly true that the deal has raised the bar in some areas, for example mutual recognition of professional qualifications,” he said.