Peter Mandelson, European Union trade chief, will this week urge EU member states to unblock millions of Chinese garments from customs warehouses as he seeks to force the pace towards a resolution of an increasingly acrimonious dispute.
Mr Mandelson will argue that importers and retailers have the right to receive goods ordered before a new EU quota system for Chinese imports was in place.
He said: "If the member states co-operate, I believe we will be able to unblock all the goods currently held at customs at the middle of next month." But he could face opposition from textile producers such as France, Italy, Spain and Portugal if a deal unleashes millions of extra pullovers, trousers, bras and blouses on to the European market.
Although Mr Mandelson is determined to clear an estimated 70 million Chinese garments from EU ports, there is still no agreement with Beijing on how the unlicensed goods should be treated under the June 10th quota deal.
Chinese and EU negotiators begin a fifth day of talks today amid signs that Beijing is using its strong negotiating position to drive a hard bargain.
European negotiators in Beijing propose a combination of three solutions on how to treat goods ordered by retailers that exceed import quotas: exclude some blocked goods from this year's quotas on the grounds they were ordered in good faith before the quota system was fully operational; transfer some oversubscribed goods such as pullovers or bras to undersubscribed quotas for items such as cotton fabrics: deduct some blocked goods from next year's Chinese quota.
Chinese negotiators oppose the third option because it would lead to substantially less growth for Chinese textile manufacturers in 2006. They also argue there is little scope to use the second option since most quotas for the 10 textile categories covered by the June 10th deal are now full.
Simply releasing blocked textiles by removing them from this year's quotas could trigger a backlash from EU textile producers if they felt the original agreement was being breached.
But Mr Mandelson is backed by free-trade member states Sweden and Denmark and by countries including the UK and Germany where retailers have a stronger voice than textile producers.
The trade commissioner, under fire in the UK press for handling the dispute from his holiday in Italy, wants a deal soon - not least to stop it overshadowing an EU-China summit next week.
The talks will have to be finished by tomorrow as China is scheduled to reopen negotiations with the US on the same textiles issue on that day.
If the EU negotiated a favourable deal, it would provide a benchmark for Beijing in those talks.
The US hopes to negotiate an agreement to restrain Chinese textiles and clothing exports to the US until 2008. The EU-China restraint deal lasts only until 2007.
