Giacomo Arosio and Sara Gianesello, Policy Analyst at ECDPM argue that EU-NATO engagement in the Indo-Pacific is fragmented rather than strategic, with both institutions moving in parallel with the same partners. The upcoming Ankara summit must deliver better coordination to secure a meaningful and lasting role in the region’s security architecture.
As transatlantic tensions deepen, the European Union faces a geopolitical environment increasingly shaped by great-power rivalry rather than stable multilateralism. At Davos 2026, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned that the rules-based order is weakening and that middle powers must respond through cooperational coalition-building rather than passive reliance on inherited institutions. Canada’s subsequent strategic tariff arrangement with China and the United Kingdom’s pragmatic reset with Beijing illustrate a broader trend of strategic hedging under US assertiveness. For the EU, the central question is whether to react with its own unilateral pivot, or to actively implement a coordinated Indo-Pacific coalition strategy that preserves resilience and strategic autonomy without drifting into dependency on either Washington or Beijing.
The European wind turbine industry is experiencing increasing competitive pressure from Chinese original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), whose rise reflects a national industrial ecosystem built on market-pull innovation, domestic scale, and supply chain integration. As Chinese OEMs expand globally, European policymakers have reacted with protectionist reflex, risking both trade tensions and the deceleration of the very energy transition the European Union has committed to. While the EU is scrambling to boost its competitiveness across several sectors amid the current geopolitical scenario, it needs to reconcile its strategic priorities with cooperative engagement towards the achievement of climate neutrality targets.
In the China-EU bilateral trade and investment relationship, the SME dimension deserves to be analysed on its own terms. China-EU SME cooperation is no longer a broad story of market entry, cost arbitrage or one-directional technology transfer. It is becoming a more selective, capability-sensitive relationship shaped by sectoral complementarity, financing conditions and the management of regulatory uncertainty.
On March 12, 2026, China’s National People’s Congress approved the Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (the Plan), which serves as the country’s blueprint for the five-year period from 2026 to 2030.
As ASEAN advances its digital agenda and AI adoption accelerates across Southeast Asia, regulatory choices are starting to shape trade, investment, and strategic partnerships in the Indo-Pacific. In this environment, the EU can seize the opportunity and promote fruitful partnerships amid ASEAN’s competitive market while positioning its regulatory framework as a driver for cooperation.
Timor-Leste’s accession as ASEAN’s eleventh member in October 2025 marked the end of a fourteen-year accession process and a major milestone in the country’s post-independence foreign policy. While widely celebrated as a symbol of regional inclusion and reconciliation, the membership raises deeper questions about integration, institutional capacity, and ASEAN’s ability to manage persistent development gaps among its members.
The Trans-Caspian Corridor (TCTC) links Europe to the Greater Caspian Region and Central Asia, holding great potential to boost trade and diversify transport routes. Yet, fragmented regulations and limited digitalisation still slow its development. Tools such as eTIR, e-CMR, and Single Window Systems (SWS) can harmonise procedures and streamline cross-border trade. With its strategic location and digital reforms, the Greater Caspian Region stands at the centre of this transformation. Through region-to-region cooperation and interoperable digital frameworks, the EU can help make the TCTC a more efficient, competitive, and sustainable trade route between Europe and Central Asia.
As the EU is set to accelerate on its path toward climate neutrality, technological sovereignty and independence, the European Union’s access to Critical Raw Materials (CRM) poses a pressing structural priority, with CRMs playing fundamental roles in the manufacturing of semiconductors, solar panels, wind turbines, and other essential components of the emergent green and digital economy. Despite this apparent strategic importance, the EU relies on a dangerously bottlenecked import base. With China producing 86% of the world’s rare earth minerals, the EU imports 100% of its supply of heavy rare earth elements (REE) from China. Such a dependency transforms CRMs from merely a supply chain concern into a genuine geopolitical challenge. This policy brief argues that CRM integration into the EU-India FTA would be a strategic necessity for the security of Europe’s industrial future.