cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/51621837

Catalyzed by a global polycrisis and associated disruptions, Taiwan and European countries have rapidly moved towards deepening their relations—resulting in a five-fold increase in engagement volume in recent years. Engagement is now delving into the more sensitive areas of security and defense cooperation. To ensure continued momentum, both sides need to invest in future-proofing their mutually-beneficial ties.

[Op-ed by Matej Šimalčík, Executive Director of the Central European Institute of Asian Studies.]

Towards the end of January this year, the European Parliament adopted a resolution that called for “enhancing security and defense cooperation and partnership with the EU’s Indo-Pacific partners, including Taiwan, particularly in drone technology and relevant industries.”

The European Parliament’s call for more defense cooperation with Taiwan has followed sustained efforts by certain member states—namely Poland, Czechia, and Baltic nations—to chase down drone cooperation with Taiwan. These European countries seek to remilitarize and achieve technology transfers and investments with added value—largely inspired by Ukraine’s successful use of drones in its defense against Russian aggression.

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This development is part of a broader trend of maturing ties between European states and Taiwan. Taiwan-European ties have increasingly normalized over the past five years, shifting from covert engagement to interactions in the public spotlight. Data on mutual engagements between EU members and Taiwan—collected by the EU-Taiwan Tracker project run by the Central European Institute of Asian Studies—shows a five-fold increase in overt engagements with Taiwanese interlocutors between 2019 and 2024. These engagements span economic, political, security, para-diplomatic, and civil society fields.

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For a long time, European governments have treated security and defense cooperation with Taiwan as a taboo issue, driven by fears of potential Chinese retribution … The recent evolutions in drone cooperation, however, indicate that perceptions regarding defense and security cooperation with Taiwan are rapidly changing across Europe. In fact, three recent developments have been essential to dismantling the traditional taboos.

First, “security-adjacent” economic cooperation is exposing Europeans to the idea of security, and even military, cooperation with Taiwan. While partnerships on secure UAV supply chains are one example of security-adjacent economic cooperation, more is already happening. Last September, an unprecedented number of European companies made their way to Taipei to showcase their products at the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition … Among them was Airbus, the European aerospace giant, which is otherwise keen on selling its commercial aircraft to China, the company’s largest individual market. Czech and German defense companies also made appearances.

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Secondly, Taiwan and Europe increasingly engage on matters of soft security, such as dialogues on how to respond to Chinese and Russian foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) operations. Overlapping interests also exist in the protection of critical infrastructure (such as undersea cables) or economic security. Much of the cooperation has been driven by the Global Cooperation and Training Framework (GCTF), a platform initiated in 2015 by Taiwan with the participation of the United States, Japan, Australia, and Canada.

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Thirdly, the global polycrisis, including disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s weaponization of supply chains, and Chinese and North Korean support for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, have driven home the understanding that European and Indo-Pacific security are deeply interconnected. This has contributed to advent of European nations’ freedom-of-navigation operations (FONOPs) in the region. European nations have even conducted FONOPs through the Taiwan Strait, asserting its status as an international waterway.

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