EU Security Perspectives in an Era of Connectivity: Implications for Relations with China

This SIPRI Insights Paper assesses EU security perspectives on connectivity, alongside and in relation to its evolving relationship with China. The EU’s relations with China have undergone an important shift in recent years, with a strengthened emphasis by the EU on the challenges to bilateral cooperation. In addition, since 2014, EU and EU member states’ security perspectives have undergone a wider reassessment, one that has increased the prominence of the military dimensions of connectivity, including military mobility, in EU security planning. The EU and China are currently pursuing synergies between their separate connectivity initiatives, namely the Belt and Road Initiative and the Connecting Europe programme. However, there remain barriers to sustainable cooperation that will need to be addressed between them moving forward. This Insights Paper outlines a number of those security concerns from the EU perspective, within the transport and digital sectors specifically.