The EU on Wednesday escalated disputes with China to the WTO, requesting panels be assembled to hear cases over trade restrictions on Lithuania and on legal recourses for EU patent holders.

"In both cases, the Chinese measures are highly damaging to European businesses" and, in the Lithuania case, "impact the functioning of the EU internal market," the European Commission said in a statement.

China is the European Union's biggest trading partner, and the litigation burdens the World Trade Organization with a thorny challenge at a time its dispute settlement system is badly weakened.

The Lithuania case is over trade restrictions China has been applying to that EU member country because of Lithuania's strengthening ties with Taiwan, which China views as part of its territory.

Beijing has denied taking coercive measures against Lithuania.

But Lithuanian exports to China have dropped 80 percent over the past year, ever since Chinese authorities started rejecting many Lithuanian imports.

The commission said that Chinese claims made in February that bans on Lithuanian alcohol, beef, dairy products, logs, peat and wheat were on health grounds were not justified.

Consultations with China early this year failed to address that issue, the commission said.

On the patents matter, the European Union is challenging decisions made by Chinese courts in August 2020 that barred EU owners of high-tech patents from turning to EU courts to protect their intellectual property.

The commission said that "Chinese manufacturers requested these anti-suit injunctions to pressure patent right holders to grant them cheaper access to European technology".

The WTO's dispute settlement body will discuss the EU's request for the panels on December 20. China can oppose it, but the EU can then renew its request, and the panel would then be established on January 30 next year.

The commission said the panel's deliberations could last up to a year and a half.

The WTO's dispute settlement system, however, is in a fragile state after the United States, under then president Donald Trump, in 2019 blocked the appointment of new judges to the body's appeals tribunal.

Current US President Joe Biden has not lifted the block, insisting instead that the WTO must undergo reforms to be more efficient.

But the United States is also seeking to get the European Union onside with its harsher stance against China, over trade, human rights and Beijing's increasingly assertive military posture.

Washington has pledged to give Taiwan the military means to defend itself in the event of a Chinese invasion.

It has also barred Chinese telecom and tech companies from US networks.

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