The Pacific is more than a distant ocean or geopolitical theatre. The EU is part of the Pacific landscape, through territory and maritime space, treaty commitments and increasingly direct geopolitical and geoeconomic interests.
That’s why last week’s 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting (PIFLM55) in Palau deserves more European attention than a passing glance at a headlines about the recent Chinese missile test or Taiwan’s attendance.
The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) used its principal political gathering to advance a much broader agenda, spanning climate resilience, oceans, economic security, digital governance and the region’s right to choose its own priorities and partners.
From now on, the Forum will sort outside powers into ‘strategic’ and ‘sectoral’, reviewable after one year. The EU is reportedly entering the select ‘strategic’ partners list. Which means it will now need to prove itself worthy.
The Pacific sets the course
Last week’s geopolitical tensions were real, as illustrated by the absence of several PIF leaders – and the speculation over Chinese pressure that it raised. Great power rivalry has been narrowing island states’ room for manoeuvre and eating away at regional unity.
Yet none of this prevented the Forum from setting its own course and advancing shared causes. Just take three of many PIFLM55 outcomes: leaders brought the Pacific Resilience Facility one step closer ahead of COP31, endorsed a Regional Peace and Security Action Plan for 2026-30 and adopted the ‘Belau Declaration Urgent and Inclusive Climate Action to Keep 1.5°C Within Reach’.
Not bad for a consensus-based organisation – the EU would approve.
A security-focused perspective should thus widen, not narrow, our perspective beyond military coercion and leaders in suits (or in this case, elegantly-patterned island-formal shirts). Island states face existential threats, from extreme weather events to fuel-price shocks rippling through electricity, transport, freight and food. In Tuvalu, rising sea levels is already forcing an existential question – if the land disappears, does the state sink with it?
Vulnerability hasn’t made Pacific states less protective of their agency. Palau, the PIFLM55 host, is still charting its own course despite close US ties and Quad-backed infrastructure. It’s championing a moratorium on deep-sea mining, blocking Starlink to protect national telecom investment, and staunchly defending its diplomatic partnership with Taiwan while still hosting China as a Forum dialogue partner.
In the words of Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr., ‘our partners are welcome to sail with us, but they do not choose our destination.’
Partnership without proximity
The EU should, quite naturally, fit in as a longstanding PIF partner. France’s vast maritime zones and three Pacific collectivities, which have the same Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) association status as Greenland, all but bury the notion that the EU is a mere external power. The EU-Pacific States Interim Economic Partnership Agreement ties its market to four PIF states, while the Samoa Agreement supplies the broader political framework.
The Forum’s outcomes have only strengthened the fit between Pacific priorities and the EU’s comparative strengths, from digital regulation and geographic indications to science-based ocean governance. Leaders endorsed the first regional Pacific Digital and AI Technology Principles, with a Pacific AI Governance Framework due in 2027; proposed a regional repository for deep sea mining data and knowledge; and adopted an entire declaration dedicated to creating market value for kava, a native plant, comparing this approach to the protection of… champagne.
Yet European political presence is thinner than its fit. No Commissioner was sent to Koror, the most senior Commission official travelling from Brussels being a Deputy Director-General. That contrasts with former Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen’s 2024 PIFLM attendance, which had been framed in geopolitical terms. Relevant Commissioners had legitimate competing demands at the EU-Arctic Forum in Brussels – another climate-vulnerable region facing geopolitical pressures, albeit one rather closer to home.
The same gap exists beyond official gatherings. The EU’s Pacific footprint remains largely coordinated from Fiji or delivered through regional and multilateral programmes, leaving smaller states at the margins. Geographical remoteness and institutional distance blur into one another.
Locally embedded partners like Australia, Japan and in Palau, Taiwan, gain both local knowledge and political capital: trust, access and influence over priorities. The EU, meanwhile, funds substantial cooperation (around EUR 750 million for 2021-27, including OCTs) without necessarily owning the relationship that makes it work.
Not that the EU needs to replicate Australia’s diplomatic network. Alongside a remaining sub-office in Nouméa covering the Pacific OCTs, the Commission once maintained satellite ‘antennae’ under Suva’s coordination. With the EEAS structurally underfunded, revisiting this architecture could bring political and technical staff to smaller partners without requiring an embassy on every island.
Our research suggests that this would answer another recurring Pacific demand: capacity alongside agency. Small Pacific states often don’t need another diagnosis of the challenges they face, but enough people to act on what’s already known. They call for more hands on deck, namely resident advisers and specialists, able to turn recommendations into projects.
Your move, partner
Local presence and regionalism aren’t mutually exclusive – the Pacific needs both. Whipps has urged Pacific ACP states to maintain a ‘strong and coherent voice in Brussels and within the OACPS’, to ensure cooperation under the Samoa Agreement aligns with the PIF’s 2050 Strategy. The Forum’s new partnership framework provides a clear accountability mechanism.
For the EU, this strategic partnership should be nurtured through consistent political attention, stronger local presence, support for Pacific-designed rules and institutions, and a willingness to be judged against the Pacific’s own priorities. COP31 will be the first test, and PIFLM56 in Aotearoa New Zealand the first review.
In short, the EU has no excuse for arriving as a stranger, as it shares a Free Trade Agreement and a broader political partnership with the host.
See you in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland?
This CEPS Expert Commentary is partly based on research conducted for the Prospects for EU–Asia donor partnerships in international development CEPS In-Depth Analysis report (July 2026). The commentary’s author travelled to Palau on fieldwork in May 2025. The report was commissioned and funded by the International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF). The views and analysis presented in both publications are those of the author(s) alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of TaiwanICDF or CEPS.
