Europe’s Indo-Pacific security gap: A new dataset on the EU coordination deficit

Key findings:

• European Indo-Pacific engagement has accelerated sharply but remains fragmented. A dataset of 1,077 co-operation entries spans three lanes: institutionalised frameworks (52%), defence-industrial co-operation (26%), and operational presence (20%), with the EU dominating the first and Member States delivering the rest. Europe’s aggregate engagement has never been presented as a coherent whole. The EEAS should maintain a live tracker across all three lanes.

• Defence industry is the area where fragmentation is most costly. Around a quarter of all engagement involves defence industry and capability transfer, yet operates without EU-level governance. Member State competition persists, Türkiye competes as a pure arms exporter, and drone co-operation proceeds without Brussels oversight. A DG DEFIS-convened working group could provide some minimal governance architecture.

• A de facto pattern of national specialisation exists but remains unorganised. France leads on maritime presence, Central Europe on industrial ties, the Baltics on cyber. An EEAS-maintained niche contributions catalogue would make this legible to partners without requiring new institutions.

Europe’s Indo-Pacific presence

European and Indo-Pacific security is more intertwined than ever. The region is vital to European prosperity, maritime security, and the rules-based order.

While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has concentrated European strategic focus at home, it has simultaneously underscored the interconnectedness of the two areas, most notably through China’s support for Russia and North Korea’s deployment of troops on European soil.

Similarly, the unravelling of international norms under the current US administration has increased Europe’s security burden, but also created new common ground with middle powers in the Indo-Pacific that might wish to hedge against great power influence. For partners recalibrating their dependences, a fragmented European offer is weaker than a coordinated one. The case for European coordination in the Indo-Pacific is therefore a condition of European strategic relevance.

The new dataset presented in this brief¹ suggests that European actors have increasingly acted on this logic. Between the EU’s 2021 Indo-Pacific strategy and the fourth Indo-Pacific Ministerial Forum in November 2025, European security engagement in the region moved from aspiration to something more tangible. 

Military deployments by France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands reached a post-Cold War peak in 2024–25, while the EU translated framework language into more concrete security arrangements: Security and Defence Partnerships (SDPs) were concluded with Japan and South Korea, followed by India and Australia in early 2026.

The database further shows that Indo-Pacific co-operation is increasingly relevant to Europe’s own rearmament, with a significant share of engagement running through defence procurement, capability transfer, and industrial co-operation. The dataset includes 1,077 cooperation entries, covering EU institutions, 27 EU Member States, five non-EU countries (Norway, Switzerland, Türkiye, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom) and 49 Indo-Pacific partners from 1947 to early 2026.

The data reveals three distinct lanes of cooperation: institutionalised cooperation (frameworks, treaties, and dialogues: 52% of entries), material cooperation (defence industry and capability transfer: 26%), and operational presence (exercises, deployments, and training: 20%).

Activity has accelerated sharply: nearly 60% of all recorded entries fall in the 2020s, with 2024–25 alone accounting for 39%. This partly reflects recency bias in data collection, but the scale of the post-2020 uptick – driven by the 2021 strategy, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and growing concern over rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific – is genuine.

The EU dominates the first lane, providing the scaffolding of dialogues, strategy documents, and partnership agreements, as well as EU-level capacity building and cooperation on cyber and hybrid threats.

Countries do the heavy lifting in material and operational terms, accounting for the overwhelming majority of defence-industry entries in the dataset and the majority of training and capacity-building entries. These are naturally Member State competencies, but the absence of EU-level coordination in these lanes often leaves duplication and competition unmanaged.

Fragmented specialisation

here is a steep hierarchy among European actors. France dominates with 153 entries, accounting for roughly a quarter of all maritime-themed cooperation. The United Kingdom, operating outside EU structures, contributes 90 entries through forward-deployed assets and institutional infrastructure including a permanent garrison in Brunei and the Five Power Defence Arrangements. A second tier of substantial engagers includes Italy (84), Germany (77), Poland (54), Czechia (54), and the Netherlands (43), each with distinctive profiles.

Several Central and Eastern European states stand out in the data. Poland and Czechia have strong defence-industry footprints in Asia, with growing links to South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

Estonia (29) leads Europe on cyber-security cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners. These are niche contributions, but they represent genuine capability that the EU could scale.

Below this second tier of engagement, a long tail of 21+ EU Member States accounts for 307 entries collectively. Much of it consists of niche but meaningful ties, from cyber and training links to defence-industrial contacts and legacy bilateral channels. Without an EU-level aggregating function, partners see these as scattered national fragments rather than as part of a broader European offer.

On the partner side, engagement is concentrated around a small club. India (134 entries), Japan (116), and South Korea (101) together absorb a third of all European cooperation. The next tier – Indonesia (75), Australia (69), Vietnam (57), the Philippines (54), and Singapore (50) – takes the total to 61%.

Australia presents a distinctive case. With 69 entries it sits in the second tier of Indo-Pacific partners, but that count obscures a specific structural disruption.

France’s bilateral engagement, historically the most substantive, was disrupted by the 2021 AUKUS announcement, which ended the submarine programme overnight and sits entirely outside EU coordination architecture.

The surprise AUKUS announcement also makes visible a wider reality: European Indo-Pacific engagement takes place within a regional order still structured by the United States.

The Pacific Islands receive negligible European security attention (France excepted), much of South Asia beyond India is thinly covered, and parts of the western Indian Ocean – where EU NAVFOR already operates – lack the bilateral density to sustain engagement between rotational deployments.

This concentration is not irrational: India, Japan, South Korea, and Australia are the partners most willing and able to invest in structured security cooperation with Europe.

But it leaves Europe vulnerable to the charge that its Indo-Pacific strategy is really a strategy for three or four countries. And there is potential in broadening the partner base.

A de facto division of labour already exists among Member States. France leads on the Indian Ocean and Pacific, Germany and Italy on Northeast Asian major economies, Central Europe on South Korea and Vietnam, Estonia and the Baltics on cyber.

The data also suggests implicit geographic specialisation: Poland’s growing links with South Korea and Taiwan, Czechia’s legacy ties with Vietnam and Indonesia, Denmark’s maritime-security partnership with Kenya. 

These patterns have emerged organically. The question is whether Brussels formalises them or leaves them uncoordinated.