"A question of sovereignty? EU Policies Towards Taiwan’s Participation in International Organizations"

Taiwan’s path into international organizations has proven to be stony. As with all aspects of Taiwan’s participation in international politics, the limited recognition of its statehood is the main stumbling block for Taiwan’s access to international organizations. However, there are a few success stories, where Taiwan, after long years of trying, could find its way into major international organizations. Since 2002, Taiwan is a full member of the World Trade Organization, since 2009 Taiwan is also a member of the plurilateral Government Procurement Agreement within the WTO and it participates as an observer in the annual World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization. In Sigrid’s thesis the EU attitude to Taiwan’s WTO, GPA and WHO campaigns are analyzed in order to answer the following research question: under which circumstances and how does the EU support Taiwan’s participation in international organizations?

In all these international organizations, sovereignty concerns have been paramount to decide over the question whether Taiwan could at all participate and what mode of participation would be most appropriate. A tripartite sovereignty conception is guiding this work: international legal sovereignty based on statehood recognition, domestic sovereignty as the authority and control of the domestic government over its territory, and functional sovereignty as a non-recognized state’s ability to conduct international relations usually restricted to specific issue-areas. This sovereignty conception not only helps to explain the European stance on Taiwan’s quest for more participation in international organizations, but it is also used to analyze the factors which are most susceptible to shape the EU policy on Taiwan’s participation in international organizations.

These factors are two EU-internal and four EU-external factors. The EU-internal factors are the EU decision-making and EU interest in Taiwan’s participation in specific international organizations. The external factors are the membership criteria of the international organizations in question, changes in the Taiwanese campaign towards these organizations, the Chinese reaction, and the role of the United States as an enabler for the EU as it is traditionally more favorable to greater international participation for Taiwan. The external factors constitute the framework of European action while simultaneously influencing the EU position. In a comparative study of the three cases of international organizations these factors are mapped, and different constellations to determine the intensity and quality of EU support in these organizations are identified.

Promotor: Prof. Bruno Coppieters
Researcher: Sigrid Winkler

Publications:

Sigrid Winkler (2009) “EU Responses to Taiwan’s Applications in the WTO, WHO and UN,” in Laursen, Finn (ed), The EU as a Foreign Policy and Security Actor, Dordrecht: Republic of Letters Publishing, pp. 235-257.

Sigrid Winkler (2008) “Can trade make a sovereign? Taiwan-China-EU relations in the WTO,” in Asia Europe Journal, Vol. 6, No. 3-4, November, pp. 467-485 (peer reviewed).

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