The EU, the Indo-Pacific and the US-led IPEF: Which Way Forward?
The paper provides a European Union (EU) perspective on the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF).
First, the recent progress made by the IPEF has given new momentum to the EU’s engagement with the Indo-Pacific (IP) partners and to its recently launched Indo-Pacific strategy.
In terms of substance, two issues appear to be at the forefront of the IPEF as well as of the EU’s Indo-Pacific strategy, namely supply chain resilience enhancement and various aspects of the digital economy.
There is probably scope for convergence and cooperation between the EU and the IPEF countries on the former issue, which is addressed indirectly in different EU’s digital partnerships, while it is the area where the IPEF has made most substantial progress.
However, the differences between the EU’s and the United States’ (US) approaches to some aspects of the digital economy may act as stumbling blocks and give rise potentially to some form of competition in the IP region, making cooperation on data-based efforts to enhance supply-chain resilience rather complicated.
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