Nothing makes European leaders more fearful than the thought of their own irrelevance. And nothing better captures this fear than the rise of China as a global political heavyweight.

A powerful EU interlocutor for addressing European concerns with the Chinese leadership? Not at the expense of every national leader's right of individually courting Beijing. An effective new framework for managing global cooperation? Not at the expense of individual countries' seats at the negotiating table.

In the wake of the upcoming EU-China summit, Europe's China angst - its fear of losing influence by granting real responsibility to China, is risking turning this encounter into yet another wasted opportunity for taking on global responsibilities.

Despite all the rhetoric about engaging China and global burden-sharing, Europeans are mute on spelling out what joint stakeholdership in global affairs would really mean and what Europe would need to do to tip the scales in China's strategic calculus from mere words on harmony to real global commitments.

This week's EU-China Summit is a perfect illustration for this malaise. The EU goes into the summit with stakes being lowered to the extreme minimum: it is not even publicly advertised and has no clear strategic focus or sense of direction. But without focus, even important and promising plans such as a new Partnership and Co-operation Agreement are doomed to become irrelevant.

The contrast to the United States, where the idea of joint global leadership via a G2 is gaining currency, could not be starker. Europe as the self-declared champion of effective multilateralism, however, has failed to back up its rhetoric with concrete steps on what jointly working on global problems with China would mean.

For fear of further losing influence in the global arena, European leaders still have a persistently unpleasant gut feeling about truly entrusting China with global responsibilities.

In the eyes of many EU leaders scenarios such as seeing ranking Chinese Communist Party members holding high-level posts at the UN, the World Bank, and the WTO still invoke the paralysing fear of being left behind instead of marking the path towards becoming joint stakeholders of global governance.

As a result the EU has been unable to produce a bold global agenda powerful enough to supersede short-term national political calculations. Paradoxically, clinging on to its vested rights and perceived national relicts of power actually leaves it less influential on the course of world affairs. This means that in a way Europe lacks a common voice on China precisely because it lacks strategic confidence in jointly shaping world affairs with an increasingly influential China.

Rather than explaining to their voters that co-operating with Beijing to address global challenges does not necessarily mean compromising one's own political values, European policy makers prefer the blame China game for pandering to domestic audiences.

Europe in an increasingly powerless position

This leaves Europe in an increasingly powerless position - ready to be exploited by the sklilful Chinese diplomacy. Only if Europe overcomes its China angst and spells out a bold and concrete vision for jointly shaping global order will it remain influential.

Technically, the EU is well-placed to use co-operation with China for giving life to its vision of effective multilateralism. It has built up an impressive system of co-operation with China that brings together a unique mix of instruments and mechanisms aimed at jointly addressing policy challenges - from trade to nuclear non-proliferation.

At the top, however, the annual EU-China Summit has become a lame duck and has failed to provide the requisite political backing for the EU's new type of flexible network diplomacy that engages with different actors and different levels of the Chinese government.

It is high time for the EU to change course and make the EU-China summits count. That is, the EU needs to bring to the table a clear agenda with the key points that matter and on which the EU can build broad consensus.

Such an agenda could include issues such as spelling out a concrete framework for how the EU can most effectively assist Beijing in turning China's ambitious new climate change goals into reality or how China can facilitate international efforts to stop Iran from achieving nuclear weapons through support for the multilateralisation of the nuclear fuel cycle.

In turn, European leaders need to make Europe ready for embracing a world in which individual EU member states will no longer occupy the front bench places in global affairs. Having small European countries such as Austria and the Netherlands cling to their directorships on the World Bank board and Italy to their seat at the G20 summits is anachronistic. By reducing its over-representation in many global bodies, Europe needs to make room for allowing further Chinese representation and responsibilities.

Europeans seem to be reluctant to specify demands on China for global responsibility in order not to risk receiving what they wish for. If we really wish for effective multilateralism, let us be ready to embrace it. Our own experience in Europe has shown that real power is often a more subtle form of influence.

Björn Conrad and Stephan Mergenthaler are researchers at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin, an independent non-profit think tank focusing on effective and accountable governance, where they co-lead the "EU, China and global governance" programme.