The EU and Taiwan

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• the Robert Schuman Centre Seminar Series

Join Jean Monnet Fellow Aurelio Insisa as he presents his latest research at the Robert Schuman Centre Seminar Series

Relations between the EU and Taiwan, as well as between some of the union’s member states and the self-ruled island, have been on an upward trajectory since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Powerful drivers have played a role in the emergence of this dynamic: raising tensions between Beijing and Taipei, the re-evaluation of Europe’s relation with China, growing alignment between G7 countries after the Trump years, as well as the re-organisation of global supply chains, especially in the critical semiconductor sector.  

This seminar will explore how the Tsai administration in Taiwan has been making use of strategic communications, namely the use of words, actions, images, or symbols to influence the attitudes and opinions of target audiences to shape their behaviour in order to advance interests or policies , in its unofficial relations with the EU and its member states throughout this period. The seminar will explain how and why Taiwan aims to present itself as a lynchpin of a transcontinental alignment of democracies aiming to reshape technology and industrial policy vis-à-vis their techno-authoritarian counterparts.