The European Union’s upgraded partnership with the Philippines signals the bloc’s aim to diversify its Indo-Pacific strategy beyond trade into the security arena.
Such a move shows Brussels is seeking a larger role in a region where maritime disputes and challenges to the rules-based order could damage its extensive interests, according to analysts.
On Friday, Philippine Foreign Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro and Kaja Kallas, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and vice-president of the European Commission, signed a joint statement on the enhanced partnership on the sidelines of the Asean foreign ministers’ meeting in Pasay City.
The Philippines will receive a €15 million (US$17 million) help package under the European Peace Facility to strengthen its maritime domain awareness, particularly surveillance and monitoring.
“This is the first ever European Peace Facility support to be implemented in the Indo-Pacific and the clear demonstration that Europe is stepping up as a security partner in the region,” Kallas said.
Manuel Enverga III, Jean Monnet Chair of European Studies and director of the European Studies programme at the Ateneo de Manila University, said the Philippines was a “test case” for the EU to expand the scope of its Indo-Pacific strategy from “a connectivity agenda into a genuinely geopolitical one”.