BEIJING - The European Union and China announced Wednesday they will create a law school to promote understanding of each other's laws as they prepared for talks on expanding cooperation in trade, climate change and other fields.

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EU Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner and Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Yi Xiaozhun signed an agreement to create the China-Europe School of Law. The EU said it would contribute euro18.2 million (US$23.5 million) to the project.

Ferrero-Waldner was in Beijing for talks on updating a 1985 Chinese-European treaty on commercial relations. EU officials hope the new pact will launch a new wide-ranging partnership on trade, environmental protection, energy and other fields.

"I am proud to be here to launch negotiations for a new agreement that will reflect the reality of our ever-expanding partnership and provide a basis for us to further deepen our relationship," Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement.

The 27-member European Union is China's biggest trading partner.

A key goal of Ferrero-Waldner's trip is to persuade China to join a European initiative to improve energy efficiency, reduce use of oil and gas and cut emissions of greenhouse gases.

"This will be a main focus of this trip, to talk to our Chinese interlocutors about how to strengthen the partnership that we already have on climate change, how to help, how we can help the Chinese to develop clean coal technology," EU spokeswoman Emma Udwin said this week.

China is trying to promote conservation in its economy, one of the world's biggest oil consumers.

Udwin said she couldn't give a timeframe for completion of the "complex, wide-ranging" new agreement.

"It will take as long as it takes," she said in Brussels.

Udwin said EU officials also would raise human rights in the talks.

Other agreements signed by Ferrero-Waldner and Yi call for the two sides to set up projects to improve China's protection of patents and other intellectual property and to teach high-level business skills to Chinese students.

The EU complains that China is failing to protect foreign intellectual property, costing European companies billions of dollars (euros) a year in lost potential sales. Beijing has criticized EU anti-dumping duties imposed on imports of Chinese-made shoes.

The two governments said the law school would be run by a group of European academic institutions and at least one Chinese partner. They did not say when it would be set up or where.

The school is meant to "improve the understanding of the Chinese legal profession of European and international law and will help European professionals, academics and students to widen their knowledge of Chinese law," said an EU statement.