Will the EU take view of the Indo-Pacific? Comparing France’s and Germany’s approaches

Summary:

In order to assess the likelihood of a possible common EU approach to the Indo-Pacific, it seems necessary to first of all closely analyse and identify strategic convergences and divergences, with regard to the Indo-Pacific strategic concepts launched by the EU’s two biggest member states France and Germany. Strategic convergence is hereby understood as comprising ideational as well as material dimensions. How the term Indo-Pacific is conceived in Berlin and Paris, and which underlying ideas on regional order prevail in the respective conceptualisations, therefore matter just as much for our comparative analysis, as do the stated policy goals and objectives as well as the associated initiatives, projects and partners.

We assume that a potential emergence of a European strategy on the Indo-Pacific depends at least partly on the ‘compatibility and the coherence’ of the French and the German conceptualisations.

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