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.
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.
This EIAS Briefing Paper explores the implementation of a joint, fiat-backed stablecoin as a tool for facilitating EU-China Trade, which reached a valuation of approximately 762 billion USD in 2024. Despite the high volume of Bank-to-Bank (B2B) transactions, bilateral trade remains tethered to inefficient financial infrastructure characterised by high foreign exchange (FX) markups, third-party reliance, and settlement latencies. These frictions impose systemic costs and lock up billions in working capital. This paper proposes a private fully-collateralised stablecoin pegged to a 50/50 basket of the Euro (EUR) and Offshore Renminbi (CNH). Blockchain architecture and smart contract automation offers the potential of near-instantaneous completely transparent settlement and reductions in transaction costs to a fraction of traditional transfers.
The Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea), a technologically advanced nation, is internationally famous for its export of semiconductors, cars and pop culture. In the past few years, South Korea has also successfully grown its defence industry, securing major deals abroad. Emerging as one of the world’s fastest-growing defence exporters, South Korea ascended from the 31st position in 2000 to a top ten ranking between 2019 and 2023 in the global arms trade, taking many by surprise, especially in Europe.
Over the past two years, geopolitical shifts in Eurasia have significantly impacted global supply chains, alongside various political and economic dynamics. The repercussions of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Houthi attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea have led to serious discussions on the liability of different transport routes. There has been a visible redirection of cargo flow from northern to southern routes in the East-West direction, rendering traditional transport paths less relevant and sought for. Amidst the diminishing significance of the New Eurasian Land Bridge (NELB) or ‘Northern Corridor,’ a demand for alternative transport routes has emerged, with particular attention drawn to the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), also called the ‘Middle Corridor.’
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which produces the most advanced chips in the world, is positioning itself in a strategic position in the global economy. On one hand, the geopolitical tensions and domestic resource constraints are pushing TSMC to diversify manufacturing overseas. On the other, the European Union seeks to attract investment through the European Chips Act to reduce dependence on external suppliers. It has resulted in the EU–TSMC joint venture “European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC)”, a pilot initiative to assess whether TSMC’s efficient production model can be adopted to Europe. Although the European Chips Act provides subsidies, it fails to address the underlying structural barrier. The sustained EU–TSMC semiconductor ecosystem cannot be built with financial support alone, but requires comprehensive reforms to address regulatory fragmentation across the EU’s single market and knowledge transfer through TSMC’s production and management model. Therefore, to strengthen EU–TSMC cooperation, prioritising regulatory simplification, reducing administrative fragmentation and establishing an exchange and training scheme that facilitates efficiency and training programmes that support operational learning from TSMC’s business model.
As the EU leverages the 2026 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and its Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) to diversify CRM supply chains, India becomes a strategic supplier of minerals such as bauxite, lithium, and rare earths. Yet CRM extraction and mining in India has long intersected with indigenous (Adivasi) rights conflicts, where deposits on or near indigenous lands trigger disputes over land acquisition, forest rights, and community consent. India’s formal framework, including the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, PESA, and the Forest Rights Act (FRA), offers robust protections, but implementation gaps and corporate pressures endure. FTA‑driven CRM expansion risks deepening Adivasi land rights conflicts unless EU‑level due diligence and sustainability commitments are matched with effective, consent-based safeguards at the local level. The credibility of CRM‑linked, value‑based supply chains depends on the EU aligning its green‑industrial ambitions with effective protection of Adivasi land rights, as well as on India’s capacity to put Free, Prior and Informed Consent-like (FPIC) safeguards into concrete practice.
Submarine-cable security has arrived on the European agenda as a sabotage problem, and the European Union has answered it well: a comprehensive Cable Security Toolbox built on operational resilience rather than perfect protection. Read against the empirical record, however, the threat lies elsewhere. Cable damage is overwhelmingly accidental and, in Europe, declining; what climate change alters is not why cables fail but how badly a failure ends. That acute risk concentrates in the Pacific Island Countries, where the cable is second-order infrastructure with first-order consequences: often a nation’s only link, with repair capacity an ocean away and failures that escape the legal and disaster-risk architectures meant to record them. The Toolbox already points the right way. What it invites is not a new instrument but a change of orientation: carrying proven repair, detection and reporting know-how outward, in coordination with partners and on Pacific terms.
EU-ASEAN diplomatic relations at 45, where are we at?
EIAS Talk by Lin Goethals with H.E. Ambassador Dilyor Khakimov on the Future of Uzbekistan and Uzbek-EU Relations at 30 years of Independence.
EIAS Talk on EU-China science diplomacy with Stéphanie Balme, the Dean of the Collège Universitaire de Sciences Po, Professor at PSIA (Paris School of International Affairs), and Director of Research FNSP (CERI).