Analysis | The European Parliament’s struggle for influence over E.U.-Taiwan ties
Parliamentary diplomacy has its limits.
Philip Anstrén
This piece is part of a series on engagement with Taiwan.
The European Parliament’s (EP) International Trade Committee (INTA) is running out of patience. For years, the committee has been nudging the European Commission to fulfil its promise to negotiate a bilateral investment agreement (BIA) with Taiwan. So far, it has nothing to show for it, not even an impact assessment. In frustration, INTA recently ramped up the pressure on the Commission. In a draft opinion, it stated emphatically that it “considers it necessary to conclude” a BIA with Taiwan.
The EP and its members (MEPs) have long used this kind of parliamentary diplomacy — actions undertaken by parliaments and parliamentarians to promote diplomatic objectives, sometimes separately from executive authorities — to promote ties between the EU and Taiwan. But while these serve important international and domestic purposes, they also suffer from several limitations. EP diplomacy towards Taiwan is best thought of as a diplomacy of gradualism.
The tools of EP diplomacy
EP-Taiwan diplomacy builds on a steady stream of parliamentary delegations. Each year, the Taipei Representative Office to the European Union, alongside the EP-Taiwan Friendship Group — the most powerful lobby for Taiwan in the EP — arrange up to three delegations to Taiwan. That makes Taiwan a top destination for EP delegations.
Robust exchange allows a significant number of MEPs to get a firsthand look at Taiwan. The main effect of that is greater support for Taiwan, according to Kevin Chiao, a senior Taiwanese diplomat posted in Brussels. “After MEPs come back from Taiwan, many of them become good friends of Taiwan,” Chiao told the author in an interview, “because they get to see for themselves that we share the same democratic values, and that Taiwan is an ideal partner for the E.U.”
Because they foster support for Taiwan’s cause, delegations underpin the effectiveness of the other instruments the EP uses to promote ties with Taiwan: joint letters and resolutions. The EP uses these tools to send diplomatic signals to China over its provocative behavior in the region, to international organizations, or to put domestic pressure on the Commission or the Council of the European Union. The EP’s position as the only directed-elected voice of the EU’s 440 million inhabitants lends weight and legitimacy to its diplomacy. However, resolutions and letters still require the support of a significant number of MEPs.
For this reason, joint letters tend to have less diplomatic heft to them. Letters about Taiwan sometimes attract more than a hundred signatures from MEPs, but often much fewer (at most, that’s only about a seventh of the total number of MEPs). That said, joint letters are quick and easy to organize, making them a versatile asset in the EP’s diplomatic repertoire. During the coronavirus pandemic, this quality has allowed MEPs to send a flood of letters to the leaders of the European Union and the World Health Organization (WHO), urging them to work for Taiwan’s inclusion in the World Health Assembly, which Beijing continues to block.
Resolutions are more clunky. They need to pass a majority vote to be adopted so require laborious negotiation. However, in return, they speak with the full weight of the EP, granting them greater standing in the court of international public opinion. For that reason, the EP uses resolutions for the most significant issues, like voicing concern over China’s increasingly provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait.
Resolutions also have more domestic clout than joint letters. That makes them the tool of choice for pressuring the Commission and Council to act on Taiwan, said Chiao. Earlier this year, for example, the EP issued a resolution that called on E.U. member states to “revisit their engagement policy with Taiwan.” Resolutions establish expectations that the EP can use as a baseline against which to hold the Commission and the Council accountable. The increasing number of Taiwan-focused hearings and debates in the EP over the past few years also serves this purpose.
The limits of EP diplomacy
Over the years, EP diplomacy towards Taiwan has leveraged this toolkit to promote various policy objectives, some of which have been achieved. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the EP pushed the Commission to set up an E.U. office in Taipei, a step toward institutionalizing relations, which it did in 2003. EP lobbying also preceded the Council’s 2010 decision to liberalize E.U. visa requirements for Taiwanese passport holders.
It’s up for debate to what extent successes like these are due to EP diplomacy, however, and doubtful whether EP signaling manages to influence its targets. Yuchun Lan, who has written the most authoritative study of the EP’s support for Taiwan, downplays the EP’s impact: “In terms of a substantial and immediate outcome, the EP’s resolutions have no effect other than upsetting Beijing, nor do they have an effect on the E.U.’s policy on the Taiwan issue,” Lan writes.
This lack of clout is in part because the EP, according to the E.U. treaties, has limited foreign policy powers. Generally, it has little choice but to hope that the Commission, the Council, and the European External Action Service — which oversee E.U. foreign policy implementation and decision-making — will act on its input. Often, these more powerful bodies do not, because they have different priorities.
For the EP, democracy and human rights are paramount. “It’s an easy question,” a parliamentary assistant who works closely with the Taiwan Friendship Group told me. “It’s all right and wrong. You’re either on the right side of history or you aren’t. You’re either on the side of democracy and human rights or you aren’t.”
However, this idealism tends to alienate the Commission and the Council, presenting a more divided and ultimately weaker European position on human rights issues. These two institutions are more hard-headed than the EP, and they place higher value on the European Union’s — and its member states’ — formal diplomatic and economic relations with China. As a result, the Commission and the Council sometimes feel that the EP neglects the realpolitik that they think should constrain E.U. relations with Taiwan.
The future of EP diplomacy
These obstacles lie at the root of why INTA and the EP have failed to secure a start to BIA negotiations with Taiwan. The Commission has refrained from approaching Taipei because it worries that this would impede efforts to reach an investment agreement with China. EP diplomacy, including resolutions and hearings in addition to INTA’s draft opinion, has been unable to change this stance.
Kevin Chiao believes that these measures will have an impact over the long haul, however. Demanding “immediate” results from the EP, as Yuchun Lan has done, might be the wrong standard. EP diplomacy takes much longer to bear fruit. The EP’s actions, the parliamentary assistant explained, “may only be like drops of water, but they keep dropping and dropping, and after a long time — and a lot of drops — we’re bound to see some success.”
Time will tell whether her faith in this metaphor is justified — or whether the limits of parliamentary diplomacy are too great to overcome. What’s clear is that the EP will keep doing what it can to push for stronger ties between the European Union and Taiwan.
This piece was updated on September 8, 2021.
Philip Anstrén is an alumnus of Georgetown’s Master of Science of Foreign Service program and was recently a Taiwan Fellow at the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University, Taipei.
For more on diplomatic engagement with Taiwan, read the other articles in this series:
