Measuring the Strategic Value of EU – ASEAN Maritime Cooperation for the Europe – Asia Shipping Route

As tensions rise in the South China Sea, the European Union finds itself with significant interests but limited strategic presence. To remain relevant in a region shaping global trade and security, the EU must shift from broad commitments to more concrete and practical forms of engagement.

Europe’s trade relationship with Asia is deepening on both ends, with Asia serving as a market for European industrial, automotive, and manufactured exports, and as an essential source of the raw materials European industries depend on. This mutual dependency makes reliable access to key shipping lanes a strategic imperative. With half of Europe’s global seaborne trade transiting the South China Sea (SCS), the security of that corridor has moved from a regional concern to a direct European economic interest. Yet the route faces mounting pressure as China pursues increasingly assertive maritime ambitions, a trajectory that, left unchecked, could disrupt the very lifeline connecting European and Asian economies.

The SCS as a Critical Trade Artery

SCS claims disputes may be among the nested maritime disputes in the Asia-Pacific since World War II. The complexity appears not only to be linked to many disputants, involving China, Taiwan, and five ASEAN countries, namely Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei Darussalam, Vietnam, and Malaysia, but also to how China’s claims of the nine-dash line are based on its own historical approach. China expresses that its claims are intended to cover islands within the nine-dash line in the SCS, including the Paracel, Spratly, Zhongsha, and Pratas Islands, which China claims to have first named and controlled over 2,000 years ago (Rutzick & Chen, 2021).

The SCS ranks among the world’s most commercially vital waterways, comparable in strategic importance to the Strait of Hormuz for global oil supply. Its significance is compounded by a deepening sovereignty dispute: China claims approximately 90% of its waters, a maritime position incompatible with international law and contested by multiple ASEAN states (Rutzick & Chen, 2021).

The risk scenario that most concerns regional stakeholders is one in which China achieves effective control over the SCS, threatening not only the maritime sovereignty of neighboring states but potentially creating pressure on their land territories as well. This is not an abstract geopolitical concern. Since 2014, tensions in the SCS have escalated, and Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have had to consistently face China’s excessive actions in disputed areas of the SCS (Koga, 2022).

Additionally, public opinion data underscore the urgency: according to Litbang Kompas, 76% of Indonesians surveyed view China as a genuine threat to ASEAN (Aditya & Prabowo, 2025), while in the Philippines, according to OCTA, 85% of citizens report a loss of trust in China, and 68% actively back their government’s assertive response to China, for example granting the U.S. operational rights to access and utilise the Philippines’ military installations (Chi, 2025).

Compared to public sentiment, ASEAN prefers constructive engagement, rather than collective confrontation, to help prevent open escalation, but this also provides China with room to advance its position incrementally. Without a broader counterbalancing presence beyond the existing U.S. military footprint in the Philippines, the region remains exposed to conflict dynamics that could rapidly exceed current management capacity.

The EU’s Interest Gap: Strong Stakes, Insufficient Framework

The EU recognizes that SCS instability directly threatens its Asia-Pacific economic interests. EU Ambassador to ASEAN Igor Driesmans stated in January 2023 that recent crises, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the military coup in Myanmar, have intensified existential threats to regional stability, and reaffirmed the EU’s commitment to securing maritime supply routes in accordance with UNCLOS (Rm.id, 2023), especially when 82% of respondents from European firms expect their level of trade and investment with ASEAN to increase over the next few years (EU-ASEAN Business Council, 2021).

Yet that commitment has not produced a structured operational framework. EU maritime engagement with ASEAN remains fragmented because such engagement is conducted bilaterally with individual member states rather than collectively, and lacks the institutional architecture to maximize its strategic weight. A core part of the problem is the EU’s tendency to anchor its partnerships in normative conditions around democracy, human rights, and good governance. While the EU has sought to reframe its ASEAN relationship as a more equal strategic partnership, this normative orientation continues to limit its ability to engage ASEAN on practical, fast-moving security matters. ASEAN, for its part, needs clarity: what strategic maritime support, specifically, will the EU offer if SCS tensions escalate? Moreover, according to a Singapore diplomat, Bilahari Kausikan, ASEAN should be motivated to have precise definitional parameters and standardised classifications of what is referred to as “strategic” (Hutt, 2023).

A Practical Framework for Deeper Cooperation

Bridging this gap requires the EU to lead with economic substance. ASEAN engages most constructively with partners who demonstrate clear and concrete trade interests, and who frame cooperation in terms of mutual benefit rather than conditionality. The EU should therefore mobilize its business community and maritime sector expertise to jointly map the commercial stakes of the SCS for EU–ASEAN economic relations, and use this as the foundation for a structured, two-way strategic dialogue.

That dialogue should translate into cooperation across two concrete dimensions. The first is maritime technology development: the EU can offer meaningful support by co-developing blockchain-based maritime tracking systems and integrated cyber-physical systems across the Europe–Asia corridor (Permadi et al., 2020). Such systems would allow all vessel movements through the SCS to be recorded transparently and traced from origin to destination, providing a reliable, crisis-resilient data baseline. This is a domain where the EU can contribute distinctively, filling a gap the United States has not prioritized, while fully respecting ASEAN’s preference for neutrality and non-intervention (Laksamana, 2026).

The second dimension is alternative route resilience. Immediate consultations should begin on developing the Sunda Strait and Makassar Strait as commercially viable alternative corridors, offering access between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, connecting to the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as key East Asian markets including South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Indonesia and the Philippines, the states with primary geographic control over these routes, must be central partners in this process, particularly on maritime surveillance capacity and integrated monitoring infrastructure, but the EU should position this kind of partnership at an inter-regional level, not bilaterally.

Investment by European digital technology companies in these sub-sectors will represent a first-mover opportunity with both commercial and strategic returns. This agenda should be explicitly embedded in the EU’s next strategic framework for Asia, with dedicated allocations for ICT infrastructure, physical connectivity, and maritime conflict mitigation capacity.

Bibliography

• Aditya, N.R. and Prabowo, D. (2025) ‘Survei Litbang Kompas: 76 persen responden anggap China jadi ancaman ASEAN maupun Indonesia di LCS [Litbang Kompas survey: 76 percent of respondents consider China a threat to ASEAN and Indonesia in the South China Sea]’, Kompas.com, 18 July. Available at: https://nasional.kompas.com/read/2025/07/18/17453361/survei-litbang-kompas-76-persenresponden-anggap-china-jadi-ancaman-asean
• Chi, C. (2025) ‘85% of Filipinos distrust China — OCTA survey’, Philstar.com, 25 August. Available at: https://www.philstar.com
• EU-ASEAN Business Council (2021) 2021 EU-ASEAN business sentiment survey. Available at: https://www.eu-asean.eu/publications
• Hutt, D. (2023) ‘The problems with Bilahari Kausikan’s “ASEAN realism”’, The Diplomat, 13 July. Available at: https://thediplomat.com/2023/07/the-problems-with-bilahari-kausikans-asean-realism/
• Koga, K. (2022) ‘Four phases of South China Sea disputes 1990–2020’, in Koga, K. (ed.) Managing great power politics: Global political transitions. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Laksamana, E.A. (2026) Contingent capabilities: Southeast Asia’s emerging anti-access environment. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), February. Available at: https://www.iiss.org
• Permadi, A. et al. (2020) Asia–EU connectivity: Potensi ekonomi digital [Asia–EU connectivity: The potential of the digital economy] (Final report). Jakarta: Badan Pengkajian dan Pengembangan Kebijakan, Kementerian Luar Negeri Republik Indonesia & Komunitas Indonesia untuk Kajian Eropa.
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• Rutzick, J. and Chen, J. (2021) ‘The validity of the 9 dash line’, ArcGIS StoryMaps, 16 March. Available at: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4791710315c54e6fb963e10496faa4db