‘Taiwan needs European friends’: Foreign Minister Wu

Top Taiwanese diplomat Joseph Wu is holding rallies in Prague to improve relations with the EU, angering China.

Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu has visited the Czech capital Prague and called for European support in securing peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait shared with China.

“To ensure that Taiwan remains strong and resilient and has the courage to continue the policy of maintaining the status quo, we need the support of European friends,” Wu said in a speech at a conference in Prague.

The foreign minister was in the European Union country to meet with Milos Vystrcil, the president of the Czech Senate, who has been trying to promote the republic’s relations with Taiwan in recent years.

The Czech Republic has no diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

The country’s center-right government, in power since 2021, and President Petr Pavel, who took office in March, are eager to improve ties with Taipei after years of warming for Beijing.

Wu is expected to travel to Brussels later on Wednesday to meet other EU officials, according to Reuters news agency.

But Wu’s trip to Europe has angered China, with Beijing claiming Taiwan as its own territory.

Wang Lutong, China’s director general for European affairs, said the Taiwan issue is at the “core of China’s core interests”.

“We urge the European side not to provide venues for separatist ‘independence of Taiwan’ activities,” he said in a tweet.

The #Taiwan question is the core of the core interests of #China. The one-China principle is the political basis of relations between China and European countries.
We urge the European side not to provide venues for separatist activities for “Taiwan independence”. pic.twitter.com/nJgwtC4TAD

— 王鲁彤 Wang Lutong (@WangLutongMFA) June 12, 2023

Taiwan has no formal diplomatic ties with any European country except the Vatican.

But it maintains extensive informal relations, and Central and Eastern European countries have been particularly keen to show support for Taiwan, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Some EU leaders have expressed their support for maintaining peace in the Taiwan Strait. In April, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told France’s Le Journal du Dimanche that EU countries should send warships to patrol the Taiwan Strait.

Last November, MEPs also supported a resolution condemning Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait.

In an interview with Al Jazeera last month, Remus Li-Kuo Chen, head of the Taipei Representative Office in the EU and Belgium, said there has been a positive momentum in Taiwan-EU relations in recent years, especially against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and a post-pandemic economic era.

He added that a strong transatlantic partnership between the EU and the United States will also benefit Taiwan.

“Ensuring peace in the Taiwan Strait requires unity between Europe and the US, and while both have been proactive in showing their support to Taiwan, differences in the way they show solidarity [do] exist,” he said.

“But they are aware that a collective and integrated approach will send a strong message of deterrence to China,” he added.