PARIS (Reuters) -The Group of Seven economic powers need to stand united in the face of China's overcapacity in key industries such as electric car batteries, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Wednesday ahead of a meeting with his G7 counterparts.
With excess capacity flooding Europe with Chinese imports, Le Maire said that he would call at the G7 meeting in northern Italy for a rebalancing of trade relations with China.
"In the face of this overcapacity, it is vital that the G7 and Europe stand united. Europe must affirm its economic power," Le Maire told journalists.
France and Germany have increasingly taken divergent positions towards China, with Berlin eager not to upset trade relations with a major export market for its firms.
Le Maire also said that the G7 also needed to forge a joint position on frozen Russian financial assets and that France was prepared to work on a U.S. proposal to use them to back a loan to Ukraine.
With the economic divergence between Europe and the United States growing, Le Maire also said that Europe needed to "awaken from its economic lethargy" and double its growth rate in the coming years.
(Reporting by Leigh Thomas;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Tomasz Janowski)
