cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10574856

For most of the last three decades, Brussels’ interest in Taiwan was measured almost entirely in trade statistics. That is changing. Over the past two years, the European Parliament has passed a string of resolutions naming Taiwan explicitly, EU delegations have made repeat visits to Taipei, and Taiwanese ministers have quietly become regular faces in European capitals. The language coming out of Brussels has shifted too — from “trading partner” to “strategic partner,” and increasingly, “like-minded democracy.”

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The EU’s renewed attention to Taiwan didn’t come out of nowhere. Three forces pushed it into motion.

The first is de-risking. After years of watching its trade imbalance with China widen and its industries absorb the shocks of an increasingly state-directed Chinese economy, the EU has been actively looking for partners that offer the opposite: transparent regulation, enforceable intellectual property protections, and a market economy that behaves like one. Taiwan checks every one of those boxes, and it does so as a democracy …

The second is semiconductors. COVID-era shortages made painfully clear how exposed European manufacturing — particularly the automotive sector — was to disruptions in Taiwan’s chip supply chains. The response has been concrete: the European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company joint venture in Dresden, where TSMC holds the majority stake alongside Bosch, Infineon, and NXP, is now a live example of Taiwanese technology anchoring European industrial capacity …

The third is geopolitics. Russia’s war in Ukraine reframed how European governments think about authoritarian pressure on democratic neighbors, and Taiwan’s own alignment with the Western response — sanctions on Russia, support for Ukraine — did not go unnoticed. Combined with growing European concern over Chinese-linked cyber activity and disinformation, the old taboo around security-adjacent cooperation with Taiwan has largely dissolved. Taiwan-Poland’s cybersecurity cooperation and joint statements from European missions in Taipei on Taiwan Strait stability are recent, tangible markers of this.

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The political signal is clear. Brussels sees Taiwan differently than it did five years ago, and that shift is durable rather than cyclical. The companies [in the EU and Taiwan] that benefit most will be the ones that treat this as an operational opportunity now, rather than a geopolitical story to watch from the sidelines.

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