Four years after launching its Indo-Pacific Strategy, the EU still isn't seen as a serious geopolitical player in the 'region'. Closing this perception gap, not building more capability, argues Nicholas Ross Smith, is Brussels' real challenge
Since releasing its Indo-Pacific Strategy in 2021, the EU has cast itself as an emerging geopolitical actor in the world's most contested geopolitical space. European Council Conclusions in October 2025 doubled down on this ambition, promising to 'intensify' the EU's 'strategic focus, presence, visibility and actions' in the Indo-Pacific.
The problem is that the Indo-Pacific isn't convinced.
Over three years, as Principal Investigator of the EUIP Jean Monnet Network – a consortium of 27 universities from across Europe and the Indo-Pacific – I helped coordinate 111 semi-structured interviews with foreign policy decision-makers and influencers across eight Indo-Pacific locations: Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.
The findings, published in a forthcoming special issue of Global Policy, point to a consistent conclusion: the EU is respected, even liked across the Indo-Pacific, but it is not believed. Foreign policy elites in the Indo-Pacific credit it as an economic power and a normative one. Very few, however, regard it as a strategic actor capable of shaping the region's security order. This is not a capability gap so much as a perception gap, and it is the more stubborn of the two to close.
Across all eight locations, informants converged on a similar image of the EU: an economic heavyweight, a champion of climate action, and a genuine leader on digital governance and data regulation. These are not trivial strengths. But when the conversation turned to security – the currency that actually matters in a geopolitical space shadowed by Taiwan Strait tensions, North Korean troop deployments to Russia and an increasingly transactional Washington – the EU largely dropped out of the picture.
In Australia, for example, informants rated the United States and China three times more important than the EU. Meanwhile, India – an undeniably important Indo-Pacific actor – rated the EU the lowest out of any location in geopolitical importance.
Interviewees in Indo-Pacific states regard the EU as an economic heavyweight and world leader in fields such as climate action and digital governance. But very few believe it capable of shaping the region's security order
Perhaps most tellingly, despite the fact that the EU released it with great emphasis, very few key informants in any location even knew the EU had an Indo-Pacific strategy.
Only in Japan and, to a lesser extent, Taiwan did the EU register as a potential security partner. Importantly, both are locations where strategic anxiety about China is most acute and which most actively seek diversification from the US. Everywhere else, however, the EU remains what scholars call a civilian power: credible in low politics, invisible in high politics.
Brussels is not oblivious to this. The October 2025 Council Conclusions harden the EU's security language considerably, elevating it to one of three core priorities alongside ‘green and digital transition’ and ‘economic security’. The Conclusions also name the Taiwan Strait, the Russia-Ukraine-North Korea nexus and maritime shadow-fleet activity as direct concerns, and float new Security and Defence Partnerships.
For Japan, this is close to a wish-list fulfilled. For most other locations, it changes little.
The EU cannot commit its 27 member states to a unified security posture. And while foreign policy decision-makers in the Indo-Pacific sometimes value that ambiguity, for Taiwan and Japan, ambiguity reads as irresolution
That's because the underlying obstacle was never really about what strategic narratives the EU broadcasts. The obstacle is that the EU is not a state, cannot commit its 27 member states to a unified security posture, and continues to hedge deliberately on China – describing it simultaneously as partner, competitor and systemic rival. Foreign policy decision-makers, particularly in Southeast Asia and India, sometimes value that ambiguity, seeing it as evidence the EU isn't simply an extension of the United States. But for Taiwan and Japan, where the demand is for clarity, the same ambiguity reads as irresolution.
The EU cannot satisfy the heterogeneity of the Indo-Pacific with sharper language alone.
None of this means the EU should give up. If anything, the current geopolitical situation is favourable to the EU. Donald Trump's second term has unsettled longstanding assumptions about Washington's reliability. That uncertainty has pushed several Indo-Pacific states to hedge harder, including India's cautious rapprochement with Beijing and South Korea's more pragmatic China posture under President Lee Jae Myung.
For states unwilling to make a binary US-China choice, an actor like the EU that offers economic weight, technological alternatives and a more non-aligned diplomatic register is genuinely useful. But states must recognise that usefulness in order for it to matter. Our primary data suggests that the Indo-Pacific does not yet see the EU this way, largely because Brussels has spent four years describing an ambition – geopolitical Europe – that the data shows has not landed.
The EU's presence, and its broader intent, has failed to translate into a legible strategic identity that Indo-Pacific foreign policy elites recognise
The gap is not primarily about ships, satellites or defence budgets. Member states, especially France, but also Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, already maintain a real, if fragmented, security presence in the Indo-Pacific. The gap is that this presence, and the EU's broader intent, has not translated into a legible strategic identity that Indo-Pacific foreign policy elites recognise.
Ultimately, an actor's international role depends not only on its own self-conception, but on whether others accept that role. On the 'ego' side, the EU's self-image as a rising geopolitical actor is now well established in Brussels. On the 'alter' side – how Indo-Pacific locations actually see it – that image simply hasn't taken hold, except in Tokyo and, partially, Taipei.
Closing this gap will take more than a firmer paragraph on Taiwan or a new maritime security programme, welcome as both are. It requires the EU to communicate a role the Indo-Pacific can recognise and agree with, rather than the one Brussels wishes to play. Until it does, even the partners most inclined to work with the EU – as our data on New Zealand and Thailand shows – will keep underestimating what the relationship could offer. The EU has an opening in the Indo-Pacific, but whether it can grasp it is another matter entirely.
