Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Monday urged the European Union (EU) to relax its export control over high-tech products to China.

"I hope that the EU will relax its export control over high-tech products to China, let enterprises on both sides do business in an unfettered way, and fully unleash the industrial advantage of the EU," Wen said when delivering a speech at the closing ceremony of the fifth China-EU Business Summit.

Wen said China and the EU should promote their trade in services and high-tech products, as there were "broad prospects for closer China-EU trade cooperation" in these sectors.

"As China accelerates its economic restructuring, high-tech and tertiary industries are strategic priorities," Wen said, noting that the EU has a great advantage in trade in services and leads the world in many high-tech fields.

China and the EU have already set up a high-tech trade working group.

"We want to see it up and running at an early date so that we can draw up principles and find ways for developing and promoting bilateral services and high-tech trade, identify priority areas, and bring about substantive progress in our cooperation," Wen said.

The premier said China was ready to expand cooperation with the EU in intellectual property rights (IPR) and would step up IPR protection and law enforcement to safeguard the lawful rights and interests of foreign businesses, EU companies included.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, also attended the closing ceremony.

The annual business summit, with the theme of "The Green Agenda: Sustaining Growth beyond the Recovery," focused on how to achieve a sustainable recovery from the global financial crisis, climate change as well as the development of China-EU trade relations.

Running in parallel with the annual China-EU summit, the business summit is recognized as the highest-level platform for exchanges between Chinese and EU business leaders.