Earlier this month, European and Chinese negotiators reached clear conclusions on the ambitious and comprehensive scope of the upcoming EU-China investment agreement and moved into a phase of specific text-based negotiations. This is a major step forward in the EU-China talks launched at the end of 2013 and a direct response to the political commitment made by European and Chinese leaders at the June 2015 EU-China Summit. The EU and China agreed in particular that the future deal should improve market access opportunities for their investors by establishing a genuine right to invest and by guaranteeing that they will not discriminate against their respective companies. The EU and China are also determined to address key challenges of the regulatory environment, including those related to transparency, licensing and authorization procedures, and to provide for a high and balanced level of protection for investors and their investments. The agreement will also include rules on environmental and labor-related dimensions of foreign investment. The negotiators will continue working intensively throughout 2016 in order to hammer out the details of the agreement, the European Commission said on its web site.