Photo: Gabriela Flores
On October 31, 2025, the EVC Taiwan Office team received the European Opinion Leaders Delegation – a 15-member group of European think tank leaders convened by the Taiwanese foreign ministry – for a visit at the Czech Hub in Taiwan and a briefing on two emerging issues in Taiwan-Europe relations: cooperation on geothermal energy and combating identity-based disinformation (IBD).
The two lightning talks were delivered respectively by EVC Taiwan Office Head Marcin Jerzewski and Senior Project Coordinator Olimpia Kot. Jerzewski focused on how the expertise of European companies in running successful geothermal projects can contribute to achieving Taiwan’s net-zero objectives and to reducing the impact of soaring energy demand amid the AI boom. Meanwhile, Kot’s presentation focused on the growing vulnerability of Taiwanese Indigenous communities to China-linked foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) campaigns. She called on the EU to firmly incorporate combating IBD as a core tenet of its next human rights and democracy action plan, and to practically address the urgent need to support research and policy frameworks that directly confront the ethnic dimensions of information operations.
This year’s iteration of the European Opinion Leaders Delegation was co-chaired by Dr. Justyna Szczudlik, Member of EVC Global Advisory Board and Deputy Head of Research at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, and Thorsten Benner, Co-Founder and Director of the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin.
As the first European think tank to establish a permanent office in Taiwan, EVC Taiwan Office seeks to position itself as a key incubator of policy dialogue among European and Taiwanese experts. We appreciate the active participation of delegation members in this critical conversation about understudied areas of convergence in policy action between both regions.