BEIJING, February 12 (People's Daily Online) On the occasion of the Chinese Spring Festival, EU Ambassador H.E Mr. Hans-Dietmar Schweisgut extends wishes to the Chinese people as follows:

人民網(wǎng)北京２月12日電（黃瑾）- 歐盟駐華大使史偉值此新春佳節(jié)之際，通過(guò)人民網(wǎng)向中國(guó)人民拜年，并祝愿中歐合作更上一個(gè)臺(tái)階：

It's a great pleasant privilege for me to be back in China. It's my second time I am serving here, this time, in the new capacity as European a mbassador, and I think it's specially privileged time to be here, because we are celebrating, this year, 40 years of diplomatic relations between the European Union and China.

我非常榮幸能再次來(lái)到中國(guó)，這是我第二次來(lái)中國(guó)工作。今年是中歐建交40周年，在這個(gè)特殊的時(shí)刻，作為歐盟駐中國(guó)大使，我尤感榮幸。

And if you think back on those 40 years, I think it's very clear how far we have come. In 1975, our relations were not very important economically or politically, and If you look today at the situation, Europe is the biggest trading partner for China, and China is the second largest market for Europe. We are negotiating an ambitious investment agreement; we have a partnership which we called strategic partnership for the year 2020 covering so many areas from politics, security, economic trade, investment, but also global issues like climate change, energy.

如果我們回顧這過(guò)去的40年，就會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)中歐關(guān)系已取得了長(zhǎng)足發(fā)展。在1975年，雙方政治、經(jīng)濟(jì)關(guān)系遠(yuǎn)不如現(xiàn)在。放眼當(dāng)今，歐洲已成為中國(guó)最大的貿(mào)易伙伴，而中國(guó)則是歐洲的第二大市場(chǎng)。中歐雙方正在就巨額的投資協(xié)議進(jìn)行談判，并且建立了直至2020年的戰(zhàn)略伙伴關(guān)系，雙方合作覆蓋了政治、安全、經(jīng)濟(jì)貿(mào)易、投資乃至氣候變化、能源等全球性熱點(diǎn)問(wèn)題和領(lǐng)域。

It shows that we have become truly comprehensive and global partners. There are a lot of things China and the European Union can do together, and not so many things the world can achieve without this partnership.

這些表明中歐已經(jīng)成為真正的綜合性全球合作伙伴，中歐攜手可以成就很多事情。

Therefore, I do believe that in this 40th year, we will make further efforts to strength our partnership to bring our peoples close together,because I do believe that it's on this level that we have better understanding on a people-to-people level if we have more cultural exchanges. That creates more understanding and that creates the bases for our partnership and also for our friendship.

因此，我相信在中歐建交的第四十周年之際，我們將繼續(xù)加強(qiáng)這種合作，加強(qiáng)中歐文化交流，使雙方人民結(jié)合得更緊密。我認(rèn)為中歐人民加深相互理解，將是我們雙方友誼和合作的基礎(chǔ)。

So it is in this period that I would like to wish that all Chinese on this special occasion a very happy new year of the sheep and I hope this will also be symbolic of strengthening our friendship not only this year but also in the future. So to all of you：新年愉快！

在這個(gè)特別的之際，我祝愿中國(guó)人民羊年快樂(lè)！我也希望中歐的人民的友誼在今年以及在未來(lái)的日子里得到不斷加強(qiáng)。最后祝大家新年愉快！