Every few months, another think-tank piece comes out explaining that "security cooperation between the EU and Taiwan is no longer taboo." They cite European Parliament resolutions, naval transits through the Strait, semiconductor joint ventures. All true, and all worth tracking. But if you actually live in this space, like we do, running a consultancy that spends half its time in Taipei and half in Brussels, the official story misses the part that's more interesting: the relationship isn't just being built in parliamentary chambers. It's being built in cinema seats, alumni reunions, group chats, and trade fair hallways in Warsaw.
I want to make the case that the real momentum in Taiwan-Europe relations right now is bottom-up as much as top-down, and that anyone doing business between these two places should be paying attention to both tracks at once.
The trade numbers are genuinely good
Let's start with what's measurable, because the diplomatic story does have hard numbers behind it. Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs reports that bilateral trade with the EU hit roughly US$74.9 billion in 2025, with Taiwan's exports to the bloc up 12.1% and the EU standing as Taiwan's fifth-largest trading partner. On the investment side, Taiwanese investment in the EU has nearly tripled between 2020 and 2024, reaching around €14 billion by mid-2025 — and the EU remains Taiwan's largest single source of foreign direct investment. That's not a symbolic relationship. That's capital actually moving.
Poland specifically has become a live case study. At the fourth Taiwan-EU Trade and Investment Dialogue in December 2025, both sides flagged offshore wind cooperation and supply chain resilience as growth areas. And this June, that translated into something you could actually walk around inside.
Warsaw, June 2026: the expo that wasn't really about an expo
I was at Taiwan Expo 2026 in Europe in Warsaw, and the thing that struck me wasn't the booths, though there were over 100 Taiwanese companies there, spanning AI, EVs, drones, and advanced manufacturing. It was the framing. Taiwan's Deputy Economic Affairs Minister Cynthia Kiang noted that bilateral trade with Poland specifically has grown 20% since a 2018 MOU, and that a new R&D cooperation agreement is in the works. Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs also opened a Trade and Investment Service Center in Warsaw at the end of 2025, purely to help Taiwanese SMEs navigate Central European regulation and tax, the kind of unglamorous institutional plumbing that actually determines whether deals get done.
Sixteen Taiwanese drone companies showed up in Warsaw fresh off a Polish drone and unmanned-systems trade fair in March. For the first time, the organizers invited EU, Japanese, and Ukrainian representatives specifically to talk supply chains. Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung didn't mince words about why: he described "non-red" supply chains, ones less dependent on Beijing, as a shared objective among democracies, not just a Taiwanese talking point.
That's the diplomatic-economic layer. It's real, it's growing, and it's the layer most articles stop at. But it's not the layer that explains why so many ordinary Europeans and Taiwanese are now bumping into each other in daily life.
The cultural layer nobody quantifies
This is where I think the standard narrative is incomplete. Look at what happened in Brussels this summer, completely outside any government channel: Cinema Galeries, an independent art-house cinema in the heart of the city, made Taipei the featured destination of its 15th annual L'Heure d'Été summer festival; 18 Taiwanese films, running from late June through mid-August, opening with Tsai Ming-liang's "Goodbye, Dragon Inn." The festival's co-curator was refreshingly candid about why: with Chinese pressure on Taiwan increasingly visible in the news, the festival wanted to spotlight Taiwanese culture and history through its cinema, working with curators from the Berlin Taiwan Film Festival to build the lineup. This is a Belgian cultural institution making an editorial choice about Taiwan, independent of any embassy funding call.
Scotland got its own Spotlight Taiwan Film Festival this year too, screening contemporary Taiwanese documentary and art cinema at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh. None of this shows up in a trade statistics PDF, but it's arguably doing more to shape how ordinary Europeans think about Taiwan than a parliamentary resolution ever will.
Then there's the alumni layer, which is where things get genuinely interesting for anyone building a business that depends on trust networks, which, frankly, is most cross-border consulting. The Taipei Representative Offices around Europe host annual Taiwan Alumni Association reunions, bringing together Sinology professors, former scholarship recipients, and people who did working holidays or research stints in Taiwan. Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has now set up 94 Taiwan Alumni Associations globally, a genuinely large soft-power infrastructure that mostly runs under the radar. Add to that Taiwan's Europe Connectivity Scholarship, a decentralized program letting European universities design their own bilateral exchange and dual-degree tracks with Taiwanese partners, and you have a pipeline that keeps refreshing itself every intake cycle.
And then there's what I'd call the diaspora-and-friends infrastructure, groups like the Formosa Club Europe, whose 2026 Spring Gathering passed a joint statement of support for Taiwan that the Brussels office publicly thanked them for, or the various national Taiwan-friendship associations (Luxembourg, and similar bodies elsewhere) that host their own Lunar New Year banquets and networking events independent of any single embassy calendar. This is the same ecosystem that projects like Formosa Network are trying to formalize and connect, giving the Taiwanese diaspora in Europe, and the Europeans who've spent time in Taiwan, an actual persistent community rather than a once-a-year reunion dinner.
Why this matters if you're not a diplomat
Here's my actual argument, not just an inventory: the trade and security story explains why governments are motivated. The cultural and alumni story explains why the relationship is durable. Governments change. A film festival that chooses Taipei because an independent curator felt strongly about it, or an alumni association that keeps 30 Sinology professors and former scholarship students in the same room every October, that's stickier. It survives changes in cabinet.
For anyone actually trying to do business, recruit talent, or place content between Taiwan and Europe, this matters practically. The best introductions I've gotten over six years in Taiwan haven't come from a chamber of commerce; they've come from someone who did a Huayu scholarship in 2015 and still shows up to the alumni reunion. The best distribution for anything culturally Taiwanese in Europe right now isn't a government-funded roadshow; it's an independent cinema that thinks Taiwan is simply a good story to tell its own audience.
If you're building anything in this space; a newsletter, a consultancy, a content brand, the lesson is to stop treating "Taiwan-Europe relations" as something that happens in Brussels and Taipei's foreign ministries. It's happening in a cinema on Rue des Bogards, in a WhatsApp group of Erasmus-style scholarship alumni, and in a drone company's booth in a Warsaw expo hall. That's where the actual relationship-building work is, and it's a much more interesting place to be operating than a press release.
Sources: Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs trade statistics (2025); European Commission DG Trade and Economic Security bilateral factsheets; Focus Taiwan, Taipei Times, and Vision Times reporting on Taiwan Expo 2026 in Europe (Warsaw, June 22–24, 2026); Cinema Galeries (Brussels) and Visit Brussels event listings for L'Heure d'Été 2026; Spotlight Taiwan Film Festival, University of Edinburgh; Taipei Representative Office in the EU and Belgium event archive.
Antoine Collard
I'm Antoine. I lived in Taiwan for six years, graduated from National Taiwan University, worked inside local companies and built a network the slow way. I now help Europeans engage with Taiwan without the detours I took to understand it.