Peter Mandelson, European Union trade chief, will urge EU member states this week to unblock millions of Chinese garments from customs warehouses as he is seeking ways to resolve the increasingly acrimonious dispute.

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, according to The Financial Times.

"If the member states cooperate, I believe we will be able to unblock all the goods currently held at customs in the middle of next month," the EU trade chief said.

But he could face opposition from textile producers such as France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, countries whose textile manufacturers are finding strong competition from China, if a deal unleashes millions of extra pullovers, trousers, bras and blouses onto the European market.

Chinese and EU negotiators finished a fifth day of talks Sunday on how the blocked goods should be treated under the June 10 quota deal, but have since then failed to reach an agreement.

According to the Financial Times, EU negotiators in Beijing propose a combination of three solutions on how to treat goods ordered by retailers that exceed import quotas.

The first is to exclude some blocked goods from this year's quotas on grounds that they were ordered in good faith before the quota system was fully operational.

The second is to transfer some oversubscribed goods such as pullovers or bras to undersubscribed quotas for items such as cotton fabrics

And the third is to deduct some blocked goods from next year's Chinese quota.

Source: Xinhua