On October 15, 2024, EVC Taiwan Office Head Marcin Jerzewski spoke at the “Navigating in a World of Uncertainty: Challenges for Japan and Europe” symposium, co-hosted in Tokyo, Japan by the Keio Center for Strategy (KCS) at Keio University, the Center for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) at the Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), and the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) Japan Office.
As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues and the world enters into an ever more uncharted period, Europe and Japan – or more broadly Europe and the Indo-Pacific region – face increasingly connected challenges. The symposium explored two of the key tasks for Japan and Europe, namely the need to enhance deterrence and to address the China challenges, while awaiting the US elections.
In his remarks, Jerzewski focused on how the “China challenges” shape Europe’s external action. The People’s Republic of China poses economic and security challenges to Europe while the normative gap between Brussels and Beijing widens. While the EU is actively working to cultivate “an even playing field” in economic relations with China, the bloc has yet to recognize Beijing as a security threat. The efforts to create a more assertive and unified “EU27+1” approach vis-à-vis the aspiring Asian hegemon are further complicated by the fragmentation of the European Union and divergent interests of members states.
