Patrik Ström

This introduction sets the stage for the monograph’s analysis of the EU and Japan’s role in the Indo-Pacific. It starts with identifying both the importance of the Indo-Pacific for each of these actors and the increasing importance of the common ties in the contemporary precarious era marked by increasing geopolitical competition amid the retrenchment of the Liberal International Order. The signature of the Economic and Strategic Partnership in 2018/19 has laid the foundation for fostering ties between the EU and Japan, and the Indo-Pacific, home to critical sea lanes, supply chains, and security tensions, has emerged as one of the key arenas where this cooperation proceeds. While these empirical developments are pregnantly laid out, the Introduction proceeds with clarifying some conceptual grounds on which the monograph is built, revolving around strategic partnerships, geopolitics/geoeconomics, and the ideas of symmetry and asymmetry. Finally, we introduce the chapters of this book and show how they contribute to both the discussions about Japan–EU relations and broader questions on the structuring of International Relations.

This conclusion reviews the advances of the presented monograph, and offers several particular ways in which the findings can serve for future research. These include the inquiry into the shape and institutionalisation of the Indo-Pacific, security coordination of the EU–Japan relationship in the unhinged global system, the need to foster economic security and possibilities of further cooperation in fields of, inter alia, digital economy and climate technology.

Geopolitics on the macro level is closely intertwined with trade and business relations on the firm level. Despite the importance of the interconnectedness of the macro and micro levels, this has not yet been addressed in depth. This chapter starts with discussing the origins and development of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy, reflecting the positions of Japan and the EU. We present two industry cases highlighting the importance of a “free” and “open” Indo-Pacific for trade flows as well as strategic autonomy for Japan and the EU. The first case shows how Japan is highly dependent on energy imports, which require secure maritime routes. The second case highlights that the automotive industry has been one of the sectors that benefited from the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA). Thus, open maritime routes in the Indo-Pacific region are essential on the firm-level for both Japan and the EU. The chapter illustrates how FOIP is a natural component of Japan’s trade diplomacy and is essential for European trade with Asia. International trade plays an important role not only for strategic autonomy but also for revitalising the Japanese economy. Firms are the operational level of possibilities provided by frameworks on the macro level. Therefore, the firm perspective on EPA and Indo-Pacific provides new and important insights for future development of EU–Japan relations. © 2027 selection and editorial matter, Michal Kolmaš and Patrik Ström; individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved.