(The transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)

WU Matej Šimalčík has been the Executive Director of the CEIAS since 2018 and - for the most part of 2025 - has been a visiting fellow at Taiwan's Institute for National Defense and Security Research, INDSR. Matej has a background in law and international relations. On December 16, 2025, his team published a report, “Partners in need, Partners Indeed? Tracking Europe-Taiwan relations amidst global disruption.” Welcome, Matej.

ŠIMALČIK  Hi. Thanks for having me on the podcast.

Wu You arrived in Taipei in January 2025. Throughout the last 12 months, how has it changed your perspective of how you examine and analyze Taiwan-Europe relations?

ŠIMALČIK Of course, the relations have always been dynamic, right? Things are evolving due to changes happening on domestic levels in Taiwan, in Europe, but also external factors have influence on the relationship. Even in the report, and that's also why we chose the subtitle of “Tracking relations amidst global disruption”. We did frame the relationship as having evolved through a series of disruptions, crises that we've seen emerge in the international environment over the past five years, through which Europe and Taiwan have been getting closer. 

Before coming here in 2024... 2023... 2022 - even before, right - we have been really observing rising tendency of cooperation between European countries and Taiwan. And that was sort of a prediction that I had coming here for 2025 as well. And that prediction is largely true, right? We do see continuing engagement, even widening engagement. 

But of course, we did not yet know what would be the full impact of yet another disruption happening on the global stage. That being the second Trump administration in the U.S., with its mercantilist and transactional foreign economic policy, which of course has major impacts – not just on Taiwan, but on Europe as well. Meaning that, of course, considerable political resources, personal resources in all of the countries that we are looking at, including Taiwan, have to be diverged on managing the relations with the United States. Which means that maybe we do not have as much capacity to push for more developments in the overall Europe-Taiwan relationship.

But this does not mean - and should not be read as meaning - that the relationship is losing momentum or losing its significance. To the contrary, and not just due to the pressures both Taiwan and Europe are facing from the U.S. currently, but even more so due to the other crises that have been shaping Taiwan-Europe relations over the past five years. 

Like the pandemic, supply chain disruptions related to the pandemic, but also related to China's weaponization of dependencies. Not to mention, of course, Russian aggression against Ukraine. All of those have been pushing Europe and Taiwan closer due to figuring out that, actually, despite being physically separated and far away, we do have a lot in common. We do share a lot of similar problems: being next to – in Europe's case – ; already aggressive – in Taiwan's case - ; potentially aggressive in the future, but certainly assertive for now – big neighbors. 

Because of these experiences and the threats, risks, and changes in the global environment that we are all facing, we do have plenty of experiences and lessons learned that we can and should be sharing with each other. So that we can improve our own governance, improve our societies, and ultimately make all of us more resilient, and able to withstand everything that's happening in the international arena these days.

WU Trade between Taiwan and Europe is strong. Europe is Taiwan's fourth largest trading partner, and Taiwan is the EU’s 13th largest partner. The EU is Taiwan's largest source of investment. Traditional industries like manufacturing, bicycles, ICT, but also in new industries: semiconductor, aerospace. Also in reaction of geopolitics, the investment and research into drone technology, clean energy, and so on. Break us down into how to think about the disruptions and how it's affected the relationship.

ŠIMALČIK So all of these disruptions have sort of created new avenues for cooperation. If we think about, for example, what was happening in Europe in 2019.  Europe started to, after several years of having sort of naive China policy, to re-evaluate its approach towards Beijing. At that time, the new China strategy published by the European Union sort of started to see Beijing in this trifecta, that we usually mentioned when we are talking about China and Europe. That China is, of course, still a partner for negotiations on topics of global importance, but also an economic competitor. And most importantly, a systemic rival that is pushing for, essentially, changes to the global norms and values that are detrimental to our own interests. 

Over time, the whole concept of de-risking has emerged. The need to de-risk was further reinforced during the pandemic, which was really one of the first major supply chain shocks in the past five years that Europe has been going through. Shortages of masks and other protective equipment were something that we were all talking about back then, right? 

Taiwan was very helpful to many European countries, especially the smaller ones that were struggling to buy the equipment on the global markets. And donated not just masks, but, for example, in case of the Czech Republic at the time, also entire production-line for producing masks domestically. Several countries also reciprocated Taiwan, which was also facing its own supply chain disruptions related to access to vaccines. China's coercion on global pharma industry meant that Taiwan had very big difficulty accessing the new vaccines that were being produced to inoculate the population against the COVID-19 virus. And for various reasons, we did have a surplus of vaccines. For example, in Slovakia where I'm coming from, but also in other Central European countries, which made big donations of these surplus vaccines to Taiwan. 

So this whole idea of health cooperation between Europe and Taiwan came really very much onto the radar, right? Besides that, Taiwan was really one of the exemplary cases of suppressing the spreading of the virus, which also put Taiwan on the radar in Europe. It also sparked this big interest among parliamentarians, for example, which really started to push hard and started to come out every year - left and right - with new statements of support, resolutions of support for Taiwan's inclusion in the World Health Organization. Just for the primary reason that it just makes sense, right? Taiwan was doing so well, so why don't we include Taiwan in this crucial international body that is supposed to help us? 

If I just fast forward to the war in Ukraine, when Russia invaded the country in 2022. That was really another big milestone, because all of a sudden we've seen the cooperation with Taiwan coming into new areas, right? Taiwan started to provide a lot of humanitarian help to Ukraine, dispersed through neighboring EU countries like Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, but also Romania.

We did start to talk much more in Europe about security cooperation with Taiwan. I mean, we've already been talking quite a bit in Europe at the time of how to deal with security risks posed by China, but China's support for Russia in the war made this need that much more important. And who else to talk about the risks and threats that China is posing than with Taiwan that is living through this threat on a daily basis, right? 

So this is where we were finding ourselves coming into this year - that a lot of new cooperation was starting with Europe. But of course, not all countries are cooperating with Taiwan equally. And that's also what kind of motivated our idea to well… let's just analyze all of them? Let's compare what they are doing? And on top of that, to show that so much cooperation is possible, actually, without even causing any controversy with Beijing, right? Of course, Beijing will have a rhetoric push back against essentially anything. But real consequences - those tend to still be rather rare, right? 

WU The report’s a 300-page report with 30 countries. Let's talk about  the Czech Republic, which is Taiwan's closest partner in Europe, whose relations with Taiwan is at a historic high. You reference 2019, so let's go back to 2019. Where were you? Do you remember the visit by the mayor of Prague to Taiwan? 

ŠIMALČIK In 2019 I was in Slovakia, but of course engaging extensively also with the Czech Republic, given that it's sort of a natural epistemological space for us, right? Having been one country for so long, we do have a lot of exchanges between Slovakia and Czechia. So, yes, we were following this quite a bit. Also understand the context at the time: Czech Republic had a very pro-China president, Mr. Miloš Zeman (Czech President 2013-2023), but also a rather more pro-China government. Not as much maybe as Mr. Zeman, but still very strongly pro-China. That was, at the time, led by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (Czech Prime Minister, since December 2025; 2017-2021). Now, as of this week, he's Prime Minister for the second time. 

Also at the time, the junior coalition partner, the Czech Social Democratic Party, was very much a pro-China party. So any pushback against the cooperation with China - whatever negative risks it was carrying - was something that was not so usual at the time in the Czech Republic. Despite Czechia having this even longer political legacy of Václav Havel, the first democratic president of Czech Republic. But also the first democratic president of Czechoslovakia before then, who was a personal friend of Dalai Lama, for example. So there was this sort of a legacy of having a critical outlook on China. But at that time, that part of the political camp was not in power. 

The visit by Mr. Zdeněk Hřib (Mayor of Prague 2028-2023), was a little bit of a change in the discourse, right? Of course, it also caused a big rift between Prague, Beijing and Shanghai, who were original partner cities of Prague. But the rift was not necessarily caused by Mr. Hřib coming to Taiwan and starting to cooperate with Taipei. It was caused due to Prague trying to renegotiate the original sister city agreements, which included a very unusual, untypical One-China clause, which is something that is very unusual in that type of municipality-to-municipality agreement - which tend to be essentially depoliticized from the big central level, government, politics, normally.

WU At the beginning of 2020, Prague and Taipei officially became sister cities.

ŠIMALČIK They became officially sister cities, while at the same time, Beijing and Shanghai severed their ties with Prague. And that's quite interesting, because it was something new, really. In my think tank, we compiled essentially a global, sort of, list of partnerships of Taiwanese cities: where they cooperate with any city in any other country, which at the same time, also cooperates with a Chinese city. So typically, that was fairly normal. And we couldn't really find any example where something like this would happen, that establishing ties with Taiwan would lead to such a big rift. 

The one big difference was that, this was the first such triangular partnership that was about to be set up that would be happening under Xi Jinping. Maybe that's one explanatory factor that we can consider: that simply under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party of China is becoming that much more authoritarian than it was compared to its predecessors.

WU 2019 was a turning point for Taiwan and Czech Republic relations, which, in retrospect, now we know that it ended the golden era of Czech and Chinese relations.

ŠIMALČIK I would put the turning point in the relationship just maybe one year later into 2020. Because while the visit by Mr. Hřib that was still something happening on the municipal level, the big change was 2020 visit by the Czech Senate President, Mr. Miloš Vystrčil, to Taiwan. That was essentially the highest ranking visit from Czech Republic to Taiwan ever, and still is. 

Mr. Vystrčil, at the time, was in the opposition, so it did not immediately lead to a big opening of the relations with Taiwan. But later on, the elections, which brought his party to power, that's when really the cooperation kickstarted. And we saw very sharp uptake in the relationship, both in terms of quality, but also quantity. 

The number of people from Czech Republic that come to Taiwan is just astounding on all the possible levels of interactions: from parliamentarians, government officials, academia, industry leaders. This year, we even had a minister visit from Czech Republic. Mr. Marek Ženíšek, the Minister of Science, one of the only two ministers from Europe that have visited Taiwan in the past five years. The other being the German Education Minister a few years earlier.

WU Just speaking to the number, the scale of the delegations that have come through in 2023. It was a historical 150-person political and business delegation that came with the Speaker of the House of the Representatives of the parliament. That, to date, is still the largest single delegation from any European partner.

ŠIMALČIK While very important. What is, of course, important is that the momentum after that was maintained. And that Czech businesses, academia, startups, but also government, still actively engages Taiwan, and has been actually very much benefiting from that, right? Taiwan has, by now, invested over 1 billion dollars in Czechia. Of course, historically in manufacturing, Foxconn was very much an early arrival to Czechia…

WU in the 90s. 

ŠIMALČIK …yeah. But since then, also, a lot of cooperation happening in high tech sector. Czech Republic is trying to position itself as one of the semiconductor hubs in Europe that is also going to potentially very strongly benefit by TSMC setting up a new fab in Dresden - which is really just across the border from Czechia.

WU That's collaborations in education, in talent training. There's been arms deals, drone research, supply chain resilience, aerospace, art, the exchange between national museums, sports. 

WU For the rest of Europe, how are they looking at what's happening between Czech Republic and Taiwan? And to make the case that it is very important to have such strong ties with Taiwan.

ŠIMALČIK We are running, for several years, this database called EU-Taiwan tracker that we update more or less every two, three weeks, which includes very detailed information about what Taiwan is doing in cooperation with all the EU member states. So all the 27 of them. And based on that, we are able to have this sort of longitudinal outlook on the relationship with Europe. Make some sort of quantitative assessment. But it's also important to go so on the qualitative side of things, right? 

Not all engagements are the same, right? So that's a little bit of a caveat that we need to consider, I think. They do have different strict interpretations of their One-China policies. They do have different risk appetites and different readings of their national interest vis-a-vis Taiwan, as well as vis-a-vis China. And that's something that we need to consider. Through this all, we essentially see Czechia being one of the top leaders of the relationship over the past few years. Lithuania as well. 

Overall, we see this sort of trend. And based on this trend, we did group all the European countries into four groups based on how well-established the relations with Taiwan they have. For that we also included three non-EU countries, UK, Norway and Switzerland, so 30 countries all together that we've analyzed. 

The first sort of group that emerged. We called them “old partners”. 

WU UK, Germany, France… 

ŠIMALČIK Of course, those relationships, they do have their ups and downs, but they are fairly settled. They are not really questioned domestically, right? 

The other group, which is more interesting, we call them “new friends”. We have also three countries - and all of them from Central Europe: Czechia, Poland and Lithuania. These countries are very much willing to engage Taiwanese political leaders. We've already talked about the delegations that Mr. Vystrčil and Ms. Markéta Pekarová Adamová (President of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament 2021-2025) led to Taiwan. This year we've seen very public engagement of Taiwanese Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in Poland. Not to mention the numerous engagements that Taiwan and Lithuania have going both ways. 

These are the, I would say, the most politically active countries in Europe right now. But they are still working on sort of stabilizing the economic relationship, right? Both sides are, of course, working on that. Even though, I guess it could be also happening a little bit faster - given that we do work in Europe and in Taiwan on four-year electoral cycles, and you need to show results as well, right?

Until 2023 I would have included Slovakia in this group as well, because from 2020 to 2023 we did have in Slovakia a very pro-Taiwan government, very much open to collaboration. We've also seen large scale delegations that were led to Taiwan several times by the Deputy Ministers of Economy, Deputy Speakers of Parliament came to Taiwan at the time as well. But unfortunately, the 2023 snap elections have seen the return of a pro-China government coalition. And due to this, we had to move Slovakia one category lower into the third category, the “pragmatist” category, which is very reluctant to engage politically with Taiwan for a variety of reasons, right? 

Sometimes it's fear of China's retaliation, which I think is a job for people like me and you, to showcase to these countries that retaliation is maybe not always happening. Some countries also take into consideration - they fear that by cooperating with Taiwan, they would be legitimizing their domestic nationalistic movements, right? Even though those are not necessarily very comparable situations. So that will be Spain, for example, which does have its own domestic issues with Catalonia, and it's sort of projecting its own anxiety into relationship with Taiwan. 

Nevertheless, these countries are still very much open to cooperating economically. You know, everyone wants to improve their economies. Everyone's very happy to work on attracting new investments, re-industrializing their economies, upgrading the economy into higher value added sectors. And that's all areas where they are willing and are actively cooperating with Taiwan. 

The last group, we call them “laggards”, right? They are lagging behind. 

Interestingly, though, if we look on the quantitative data in each of these groups, we do see what I call a “Taiwan Wave”. So even those that are engaging with Taiwan very little, we do see a small uptake since 2022. I think this means that whatever Taiwan is doing in cooperation with the “old partners” and the “new friends,” is setting an example to the other countries - showing them a path forward simply by normalizing these exchangings and making them something that's rather normal, rather than unusual.

WU You moved Slovakia from “New Friends” to a more pragmatist group. Now, with the new government in Czechia, let's talk about Babiš and his stance. 

ŠIMALČIK Of course. Andrej Babiš is very much a typical Central European populist leader: former businessman, so one of the oligarchic kinds of populist leaders. And his new government is formed with two Junior coalition parties, which both of them can be essentially described as far-right - or hard-right, however far you want to go with that description. And that is definitely going to have impact on how they run the foreign policy of the country. 

This foreign policy that we were used to over the past four years of Fiala government, that has put political values at the center and really was accenting cooperation with like-minded partners, that is very likely gone for now - at least until the next election and however that ends. But this does not necessarily mean that the relationship with Taiwan is over. Lot of good ground was laid during the past years on which the relationship can continue, right?

In our report, we do make a little bit of a prediction or foresight for the next five years. And in the case of Czech Republic, we still maintained a positive outlook on the relationship. But the relationship is going to look different, right? Different priorities are going to be accentuated. So don't expect a lot of this high level symbolism that we grew accustomed with the previous government. High ranking, huge political delegations are probably not going to be happening, but all of these engagements happening on the lower levels, maybe even up to the deputy ministers. I think that will be continuing in some way, simply because the Czech business is also very heavily invested in the relationship. 

At the end of the day, as I said, Mr. Babiš, while he's a populist politician, he's primarily a businessman. He understands a good deal. So that means also, I think that Taiwan will need to adjust its approach to Czech Republic a little bit. Give less focus to the symbolic part of the relationship, and really focus and accentuate in statements, all of these substantial developments that are happening between the two countries. Simply so that Mr. Babiš has something to show, right? That the country is benefiting from the relationship. 

There was one worrying sign during the election campaign. But we do need to look at this also through the prism that this is also election rhetoric, right? When he was attacking the previous government of Mr. Fiala: that they are focusing too much on Taiwan, and they are not focusing enough on the relationship with China. And he was questioning, and asking like, show me the results of the relationship with Taiwan. And so this is a warning signal, I think, for Taiwan, that it needs to recognize, and simply just give Mr. Babiš the answer. So that he's invested also into the relationship and the relationship can continue, and both countries can keep benefiting from it. 

Even if the political engagement is not happening to such a large extent with the new government, everything else that has been established through the past several years. That's going to be continuing, right? All of these industries where Taiwan does have some form of expertise and very good companies which offer platform for cooperation.

WU I'm wondering about how you think about symbolic gestures. As the case of Czechia, we can see that symbolic gestures have developed into substantive actions, and Czechia has become a leader in this model of relationship with Taiwan. So if this was off the table, how does that affect European states' working relationships with Taiwan?

ŠIMALČIK It's also, I think, quite a big dilemma that Taiwan always faces with engaging European countries, right? Substance or symbolism. I think that both of them have a place in the toolkit.  At the same time it is, I think, a little bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, right? Does symbolism lead to more substance? Or does more substance also lead to symbolism coming in later, right? Different actors would argue for different things. But we also need to understand what maybe are the interests, right? Of each side. 

I think that Europeans are, of course, very much interested in the substance, given the predicaments that Europe is currently facing, right? With the potential withdrawal of U.S. security umbrella, although that's still not really a settled thing. The need to re-industrialize, need to continue de-risking from China, as well as to catch up to China and U.S. in some of the key technological sectors. And that offers a lot of opportunities to collaborate with Taiwan, I think - on the substance right? But from Taiwan's perspective, I think we also need to recognize that symbolism is substance. What are Taiwan's needs? Taiwan's needs are to improve its access to the international environment, and symbolism is very important for that. 

The substance is, I think, very important for creating essentially a long term sustainability of the relationship, in which also the ordinary people will feel that they are benefiting from the relationship, right? So this is why having practical developments will be and is very important. And they need to be visible so that we can prevent the remarks like we've seen, for example, from Mr. Babiš the election campaign. 

But also remarks that we've seen raised by the Lithuanian opposition from time to time. Just think of the opening of the Taiwanese representative office in Lithuania, the first one to open since 2003 and the first one ever to actually bear the name of Taiwan instead of just Taipei. There are some politicians in Lithuania that are also questioning that whether Lithuania is also benefiting from that economically, and not just Taiwan benefiting with this symbolism that helps to anchor it in the global discourse. 

I do think that symbolism is still very very important. Precisely, that all of these symbolic developments just help to maintain Taiwan in the European political discourse. Without these symbolic engagements we would not be talking about Taiwan in a way that we are talking about it today. We will just keep talking about it like it was maybe five or 10 years ago: a China-related footnote, and not a substantive partner, whom we can have very much mutually beneficial bilateral relationship that we can and should talk about and focus on separately from China. Because not everything that we actually work on with Taiwan together is even related to China.

WU What has been the response from the public in Czechia regards to Taiwan? I'm thinking of citizens over in Taiwan in the last several years. The first we heard of a warming Czech-relations was the mayor's visit, which then led to the two capitals becoming sister cities, which developed into a partnership between the zoos of the two cities. In 2022 Taipei City sent a couple of pangolins, which is very treasured in Taiwan. Taipei has the world's leading pangolin breeding center. So it sent two pangolins to Czechia, and since then, there's been a friendlies of baseball match between Taiwan and Czechia. The Jade Cabbage, that's the most prized item in Taiwan's National Palace Museum, is currently in Czechia. It's on tour for only the second time in history. 

ŠIMALČIK In my Think Tank, CEIAS, we actually did a public opinion survey over the spring that we then published sometime in the summer. Which was looking at how various people of Central Europe, so in Czechia, but also in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, perceive different foreign policy related issues, including how they see Taiwan, right? And, I mean, I don't think we were very surprised by the results that people do have quite positive opinion about Taiwan. 

What is, I think, more important to recognize is that when we've done very similar survey in 2020, we did see rapid change in perception of Taiwan towards more favorability across the whole region. Czechia already had a fairly positive views of Taiwan back in 2020. So maybe the growth in the positive sentiment has not been as large as, for example, in Slovakia or Hungary - which have recorded much higher uptakes. But in the current situation of 2025, Czechs are among the most positively perceiving countries of Taiwan. 

Unfortunately, it's a pity that we don't have a Europe-wide survey on Taiwan available that would also allow us to look at this from a broader Europe-wide perspective, to situate Czechia. 

We do see that, however, that there are political divides that come into play. Essentially, when you look at political parties that, those voters that voted for the political parties of the previous government, those are very dominantly pro-Taiwanese, right? With Mr. Babiš’s party, ANO, it's a little bit less but still not negative. I think the most worrisome is the far-right junior partner, SPD, where there is really much much much lower favorability of Taiwan, and also much higher favorability of China. The second junior partner, the Motorist party: they are, I think, somewhere in between these two. They're not overwhelmingly critical of China, not overwhelmingly positive on Taiwan, but also not being somewhere on the bottom, right? 

That paints a very diverse picture of Czech political life and the community's outlook on Taiwan. We did also ask people about, for example, what they think about Beijing's claim to Taiwan, right? And essentially, everyone rejects that, right? Very, very few people, like single digit percentages, support that Beijing's claim that Taiwan is part of PRC. 

However, we do see that also still large shares of population have a neutral opinion about these sort of topics, which is both a risk and an opportunity. Opportunity, of course, for Taiwan to improve its public diplomacy in Czechia - also in the broader region. Because we see very similar patterns elsewhere to make sure that these people who are neutral will turn into those that are Taiwan positive, right?. And it's also a risk that China will exploit the space with it with FIMI (foreign information manipulation & interference) campaigns.

WU  You've studied China quite a lot in the 2010s and you also spend time in Beijing. So given what you know about China, how might they take advantage of the situation? 

ŠIMALČIK I think the easiest way that China can try to exploit this situation with the new government coming into power - and I don't want to go maybe into too much details, because let's not maybe give them - let's not give them a blueprint - it's just offering economic benefits, right? I said before that's what Taiwan should do with the new government. It's essentially what China will also try to do, right? 

Of course, the big topic for Europe is China's dominance in the EV sector, in the battery sector. Czech economy does have big share of automotive sector to it, right? But it's very much, even comparatively in the region, lagging behind in transitioning the automotive sector into the EV sector. Poland, Slovakia and Hungary are all further ahead in this project of upgrading the industry. In case of Poland, very much with the help of South Korea. In case of Hungary, both South Korea, but also China as an important player. And in case of Slovakia, very much due to China. 

This is maybe something that China could be trying to do. Of course, automotive sector is maybe not something where, especially the EVs, is not something where Taiwan can really compete with China. We did really allow China to steal the race. And that is the dilemma for Europe, right? We keep talking about dilemmas. So this is the dilemma for Europe, to what extent improving, upgrading the industry means de-risking from China versus cooperating with China. 

This is, I think, something that they will be doing. Of course, also lot will depend on how Mr. Babiš and his government are received by the other international partners. Will they be welcome cooperation partners, or will they be getting into isolation? That's something that China can very easily exploit. And the neighboring Slovakia offers a very good example of that, right? 

I mentioned before that Slovakia was one of the top friends of Taiwan in Europe as well. Until 2023 when the Prime Minister Robert Fico-led government came to power. This is Fico’s fourth term in power. And essentially through his whole career as a former Communist Party member back during the communist Czechoslovakia era, he's always had a very comfortable relationship with global autocrats. Not just with China, but also with Russia, with Vietnam. In the earlier days of his career, there were very famous photos circulating in Slovakia of him meeting the Libyan dictator Gaddafi in a tent to have tea. So he's always been very comfortable in that position. 

But with this current term and with how he has made cooperation with Russia and China, a central tenet of his election campaign, he's gone that much more in on the relationship. And of course, China is very much happy to help him out with this, right? So he's been to China, already, twice, since his current term. Iif he did not have the 2024 assassination attempt against him in the spring, I think he would have gone even more. But of course, he was unable to travel for several months. He is very much choosing to engage in symbolic diplomacy, but not with Taiwan, but with the PRC: upgrading the relationship to a strategic partnership, bringing the largest ever delegation from Slovakia to China last year, which was quite interesting. Because besides him, there were eight other cabinet members with him, and such a large political delegation has never traveled from Slovakia anywhere. 

There is this question hanging in the air, like, why to China? All of a sudden, we do this​​.​​ This is very much playing into China's hand, even though it is motivated by his own organic interest in the relationship as well. 

We will need to see whether they will try to orchestrate something very similar with Mr. Babiš. The conventional wisdom that we have about Mr. Babiš and Czech Republic is that he is personally not very fond of China due to past business deals going sour from his business career. But you never know, right? Now he's a politician primarily, so maybe he will consider other things. Just a final thought on this topic: when he was in power for his first term, while there was a very pro-China Junior party in his government and a pro-China president in Czech Republic, he did not stop some of the very critical steps taken by Czech regulators at the time. Like the Czech cyber agency, issuing the now very famous warning against cyber risks posed by Huawei, for example.

WU Partners in need, partners indeed. This 300-page report is quite large, consisting of 30 countries, so we're not going to get through all 30 countries today. But I'll just let you talk about some of the recommendations that you posed for Taiwan and for EU moving forward. You already talked about boosting trade, for example. And to clarify, there is no one single trade agreement between Taiwan and the EU, as there is with the UK, the US, Canada, for example.

ŠIMALČIK I think it's important to remember that we do see similar trends happening across Europe of more cooperation with Taiwan. Maybe not always so openly. Sometimes a little bit more of the record.

You did mention in the beginning, the Europe trip by Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung, but he also visited several Western European countries. He did visit France. He did come to Italy, even Netherlands, right? And while that visit was originally kept hush hush at the request of the Dutch government, which it later did come out publicly, right? That this happened. And Netherlands is actually one of the most important partners for Taiwan in the economic area - if not so in the political so much, at least, in the overt sense. 

If we still sort of think about this symbolism-versus-substance question. We have seen a lot of symbolism over the years. The substance maybe needs to catch up a little bit to that. And then maybe we will see again, the next wave of symbolism as a sort of essentially interlinked way of how the relationship is managed. This means we both need to do important homework when it comes to the economic cooperation.

First of all, we do sometimes see the economic cooperation being approached very reflexively. Everyone you know, sort of knowing that Taiwan is the semiconductor powerhouse. So, oh yeah, let's go cooperate on semiconductors. And sometimes that led to maybe wrongly uh created expectations that, oh, every country in Europe is going to all of a sudden have a fab right? That's just impossible. So we need to be also realistic with these expectations, and focus on other sectors where we can work together. Ranging from new greenfield investments - coming both ways, of course - to even  smaller cooperation between startups, right?. 

The second part of the homework is that there are still persistent market access barriers on both sides that need to be resolved. From a European perspective, the big issue recently was that European companies do want to invest into wind power in Taiwan, which is, of course, very beneficial to Taiwan given its very precarious energy security position. But market access barriers are making this much more difficult. To the point that last year EU had to initiate the WTO case against Taiwan. The case was settled by the end of the year, right? So it got the both European Union and Taiwan to the table. They hashed out the differences, and now we need to wait out and see how implementation of that agreement goes, right? 

It would help if European Union and Taiwan would conclude a sort of a broad ranging economic agreement, something that Taiwan already has with several countries in North America, for example, but also with UK. But the momentum in Europe for concluding this type of agreement, the Bilateral Investment Agreement that would precisely resolve these market excess issues. The momentum, the appetite is unfortunately not there right now, especially on the political side, on the member state side, on the side of the European Commission as well. 

However, European Parliament has been very actively pushing for this. So there are allies of Taiwan on this topic in Europe as well. 

What has been emerging as a very interesting area of Economic Cooperation is cooperation in what I call in the report, “Defense-Adjacent Sectors”. So think, drones, right? That's a very new hot topic for both Europe and Taiwan, especially the European frontline countries. So the Baltic states, Lithuania, but also Latvia, Estonia as well as Poland, are very interested in this topic - Czech Republic as well - and are already actively cooperating with Taiwan in sort of establishing the industry. While at the same time also working very closely with Ukraine, right? Which has been using drones very skillfully in defense against the Russian aggressor. 

This is something to think about, how this sort of economic cooperation which relates to drones, a “dual use sector”, is also helping to normalize the idea that we can cooperate with Taiwan on defense-related topics. 

Crucially, energy as well, in the sort of reverse. Taiwan does have a very unfortunate energy security situation, given the close down of the nuclear plant; given the overreliance on imports of fossil fuels. And the green energy sector, while it is evolving, it's maybe not evolving as fast as it should be, given the situation it is in. This over dependence on imports of carbohydrates, but also the rising energy needs of Taiwan due to the semiconductor sector, AI sector, etc. And this is where Europe can be helpful.  We do have good companies working on geothermal energy, which is also something that could be explored with Taiwan, given the geothermal potential that the island has. 

There are - the developments really happened in many sectors, beyond economics, through the entire European continent: from concluding new treaties, establishing new forms of security cooperation, especially on soft security issues like countering disinformation, countering FIMI from China, from Russia, from any other malign actor. 

Dealing with economic security issues, exchanging experiences on protections of critical infrastructure. The undersea cables are a big topic right now this year, due to Taiwan facing cable cuttings, very likely by China. Europe facing cable cuttings very likely by Russia using Hong Kong-use ships. So there are these sort of connections that Europe and Taiwan have been making. And this also leads us to the great cooperation that is emerging in the security sector proper, right? Energy security, economic security, supply chain resilience, countering FIMI.

Many of that happening thanks to ad hoc cooperation via the GCTF - Global Competence and Training Framework, established originally by US and Taiwan. This year we've seen UK to join the platform fully as a full member. And while we did see various EU member-states, as well as EU as an institution, participate in many ad hoc engagements through the GCTF platform, hopefully these countries will emulate the UK case and also join as full members. This platform has been very beneficial for Taiwan, because it also allowed Taiwan to work more closely, even with countries that are otherwise reluctant to engage Taiwan bilaterally. Because they maybe feel that working in a multilateral setting is just easier. So even Greece has cooperated with Taiwan on security through this platform. 

Taiwan also can be, I think, much more inventive in establishing new avenues for dialogue and cooperation. One of the lines that has been explored already quite well, and we talked about it a little bit, is paradiplomacy, right? So the engagements on the levels of cities, self-governing regions, counties. Taiwanese cities already have 28 partners in Europe with these partnerships also sparking new cooperations on economy, on academic level as well. But there should be more. 

Just with Japan, Taiwan has more than 30 partners. And we are talking about 28 across whole Europe, right? With US, it's more than 100. Of course, we do not have the, historical relationship with Taiwan, as Taiwan has with Japan. Or such a robust diaspora as Taiwan has in US compared to Europe. But still, this should be worked on more. 

The other thing that is really almost non-existent is party-to-party dialogue on technical level…   

While politicians do engage, they only engage while they're already holding an office. That's too late and that is facing constraints. Taiwan can be engaging political leaders much sooner. Think of staffers, assistants, operatives within these political parties. Young and upcoming political leaders, right?

First of all, you socialize them to the idea that cooperating with Taiwan is something normal. Second of all, you create links with these people that, at some point, some of them are actually going to hold positions of powers, and you will already have the relationship. Thirdly, this really needs to be happening across party lines. 

Engagement needs to happen with all the relevant political actors. This is the big mistake that China actually did 10 years earlier. Being an autocracy, it completely misunderstands how the democratic system, the party system, works. And it really just focused on whichever parties were in power at the time they started engaging, and completely forgot engaging the opposition - very little engagement. This is the mistake that Taiwan needs to avoid. The same goes for Europeans, right? 

The remarks that the new KMT chair had on Ukraine, that was something that really rattled the Europeans, because it just appeared to be so closely aligned with the misinformation that Russia has been peddling for many years. And we need dialogue with all the political parties, including KMT, right? So that we can just talk about these issues.

WU You’re referring to where she said that Putin was not a dictator.

ŠIMALČIK Yes, yes, yes. And if we have this sort of party-to-party dialogue platform, we can talk about this. We can voice this grievance in a very constructive way and move beyond it, right? And then we can also use these platforms for just brainstorming new ideas how to cooperate, right? 

I said about both sides needing to do homeworks on figuring out what their interests are. What are the alignments between the interests of both parties? What are the synergies that we can work on? And this type of platforms, including, let's say, 1.5-track diplomacy platforms where experts and political leaders and upcoming political leaders can brainstorm together, is something that would be very beneficial for the overall relationship moving forward.

WU Thank you for that. That's a lot of great recommendations, from policy to trade agreements to barriers, to dialogue within industries to political parties, to city-to-city. I would add on to that even more people-to-people activities. Because, this is how really the public gets a sense of who a new partner is, and they get excited about things like - yeah, it's an art show. It's an athletic sporting event. So they understand that: Oh, right! So the two countries are warming, and this is what it means for me. 

ŠIMALČIK Absolutely. This is a very crucial. We didn't get to discuss everything right? That is important for the relationship. But yeah, perceptions of people are among the most important things. And we didn't mention tourism, right? That’s also something that, well more economic cooperation, but also something that helps to improve perceptions. 

WU It gives people the access. 

ŠIMALČIK We do have direct flights… 

WU That’s right

ŠIMALČIK …into numerous European cities from Taipei. A lot of Taiwanese tourists travel to Europe. Now, let's get Europeans travel to Taiwan so they can experience this beautiful island.

WU It's been great talking to Matej. 

ŠIMALČIK Yeah, thanks for having me. And anyway, it's good that we are meeting on the last days, because I can reflect on the whole year long experience I've been having studying Europe-Taiwan relations from Taipei.

Credit: Researcher: Zack Chiang, Zoe Hu, Hai-Ahn Nguyen. Audio editing by Wayne Tsai. Transcription by Albert Chang-Yoo. Produced and hosted by Emily Y. Wu.