For all the attention to deepening security ties between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, the better focus belongs on economic cooperation.
That¡¯s the relationship with the greatest potential impact. With the world¡¯s biggest economies actively working to undermine the international economic order, it¡¯s essential that Brussels and European Union member governments work as closely as they can with like-minded Indo-Pacific partners to check that behavior.
Japan gets it. For over a decade, it has forged closer ties with the EU. Four years of negotiations yielded an economic partnership agreement in 2019 that former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a moving force behind the deal, called ¡°the world¡¯s largest, free, industrialized economic zone.¡± The Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement accounts for 30% of global wealth and 40% of world trade.
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