Feeling the Tides of Security: the Evolving EU-Pacific Islands Partnership in the Indo-Pacific Era

The Pacific Islands quadrant of the Indo-Pacific is strategically relevant and geopolitically in flux. The region’s fiber is strained by transnational risks—such as climate change, pressure on natural resources and disease outbreaks—as well as by tensions heightened by great power rivalry. Due to factors like geographical distance and peripherality, until recent years, the EU’s attention toward the Insular Pacific was less than reflective of the region’s rise in strategic importance. However, after launching its Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific in 2021, the EU intends to step up its role in fostering regional stability, security, and prosperity. The EU’s relationship with the Pacific has political, economic, and developmental dimensions grounded in enduring ties, strong economic and trade links, shared values, and even the territorial presence of EU member state France. EU–Pacific Island relations have traditionally been based on development cooperation within the framework of the partnership between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. The region is now included in the EU’s Global Gateway geoeconomic strategy. Latterly, the relationship has been expanding to encompass areas such as governance optimization, the blue ocean economy, climate crisis, public health, human rights, and the promotion of a rules-based international order. Notably, Pacific Island nations generally align with the EU’s core interests and values. They also are solid interlocutors for addressing crucial challenges like global warming, ocean governance, and sustainable development. In addition, the island nations generally look with interest and favor to the EU’s thrust to consolidate into a security actor in the region. Against a backdrop of growing geostrategic competition and increasing external assertiveness, the EU can stand as a reliable and well-resourced partner for security issues concerning Pacific Islanders: not extrinsic concerns or zero-sum narratives, but human development, capacity-building, and economic resilience. The EU can have a role also as a defense partner: one wary of being neither an intrusive boot-on-the-ground player nor a mere flag demonstrator, but a supporter of the region’s custodians. In fact, the vast natural resources of the region—such as fisheries, minerals, and forestry—need protection from predatory interests so to ensure their sustainable management, and maritime connectivity should remain free and open. Since the EU’s experience in matters of security and defense in the Pacific is very limited, establishing the EU as a regional security and defense actor is a challenge for the future.