In Dialogue: Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy and Matej Šimalčík on Taiwan
10 February 2025
Central and Eastern Europe’s (CEE) relationship with Taiwan is evolving against a backdrop of shifting global dynamics. Donald Trump’s return to the White House raises new questions about the future of Europe-Taiwan ties and how CEE countries will navigate this changing landscape. Meanwhile, Slovakia’s political trajectory under Prime Minister Robert Fico signals a deepening alignment with China and Russia, echoing trends seen in Hungary. As democratic backsliding reshapes domestic and foreign policy across parts of the region, China’s influence continues to grow.
Here, 9DL’s Head of Associates Network, Dr Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, discusses what these developments mean for CEE, Taiwan, and the broader geopolitical order with Matej Šimalčík, a Taiwan Fellowship recipient who is based at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR) in Taipei until August this year.
Zsuzsa: Your home country, Slovakia, and Taiwan have seen interesting developments in the past decade and are not immune to the growing great power rivalry. To understand these developments, looking at the global context matters. Donald Trump’s re-election will not only shape Europe-Taiwan relations, but also CEE member states’ ties with Taiwan. What are your first reactions to Trump's return to the White House?
Matej: We still need to wait a little bit to see where all the chips end up falling. From what we've seen so far, the Trump administration is having a disruptive effect on US foreign policy and its relations with allies and partners around the world. One of the most talked about developments is the freeze on all development aid, with the exception of Israel and Egypt, which may still potentially have implications for Taiwan. The disruption doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, it can serve as a wake-up call for CEE countries too. In a way, the first Trump administration was a wake-up call for Europe, where there had been little discussion on how to respond to growing Chinese assertiveness in Europe. Although there were some natural developments within Europe that were moving this topic forward, Trump's focus on China was clearly a catalyst for pushing Europe in that direction.
Zsuzsa: Trump’s return might be another wake-up call to finally adjust to a more fragmented world. While Trump might not be the first thing on people’s minds here at the moment, Europe and Taiwan have both been preparing for a second Trump administration. My question is, are we prepared? Both Europe and Taiwan will find themselves under a lot of pressure. Disruption may come in unpredictable ways, in unpredictable areas. In Taiwan, we have a divided political scene, with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) having lost its majority in the legislature. Taiwan’s preparedness to counter China’s pressure, including hybrid warfare, is being significantly affected.
Matej: Taiwan’s internal polarisation will make it difficult to adequately adjust to a new US administration. However, many countries are experiencing domestic political turmoil at the moment. In the Indo-Pacific, it is South Korea — a key US ally, in Europe it is Germany, France, and maybe Slovakia, which could face snap elections this year.
Zsuzsa: What is happening in Slovakia?
Matej: Since late 2023, the fourth non-consecutive administration of Robert Fico has been in power. He is not known to be a convinced pro-western politician, rather he is aligned with the West if he sees it serving his domestic agenda, especially when it comes to accessing EU funds. Since the failed assassination attempt on him in 2024, he has turned much more eastward politically, cosying up to Russia and China. At the same time, Slovakia is experiencing significant democratic backsliding, with obvious attempts to suppress civil society and political opposition. Recent weeks have seen probably the largest protests since 1989 against the Fico administration, which he has tried to suppress by working with the Secret Service. It is clear that anti-democratic and illiberal tendencies are developing in the country, bringing chaos into domestic politics. All foreign policy decisions made by the Fico administration need to be looked at through this domestic political prism.
Zsuzsa: Where does China and relations with China fit into this political scene? And what about Taiwan?
Matej: Right now, a large portion of Slovakian society does not identify with the West or democratic values, which plays right into the hands of politicians like Fico. They are looking at history with communist nostalgia, a trend that has been strengthening for some time, unchecked, this has been amplified by years of hybrid warfare from Russia. Successive governments did not respond adequately, regardless of their political background. It is fair to say that Slovakia was targeted by Russian hybrid warfare following the 2014 annexation of Crimea. This has been a long-term problem. If we go back to the early 1990s, and the years of Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar, he pursued a foreign policy that positioned Slovakia as the bridge between the East and West, rather than a fully integrated member of the West. Fortunately, this was overcome in 1998 and Slovakia has fully integrated into Western international structures, joining both the EU and NATO. But we now see a revival of this ‘bridge’ ideology at the expense of Western integration.
Zsuzsa: This ‘bridge’ ideology brings to mind the Hungarian ruling party’s narrative. Official political discourse in Budapest has positioned Hungary as a bridge between the East and West, and wants to be the entry point for Chinese investment. Prime Minister Orbán has projected this message domestically to strengthen his power while pushing back against Brussels’ bureaucracy and its ‘elites’ who harm Hungarian interests, as he claims. Just like Slovakia, Hungarian society has also been vulnerable to Russian attempts to manipulate discourse and exploit the openness of their political systems. Lack of awareness of such threats and lack of resilience have been challenging for the entire CEE region. China has managed to use this opportunity to reinforce its presence in the region. The Hungarian government has committed itself deeply to Chinese investments in the EV sector. However, in reality, Hungary is deeply integrated into European (German) value chains. Whether Hungary can afford to downgrade ties with China at the moment is a tricky question.
How is Slovakia dealing with China and Chinese influence at the moment?
Matej: The extent to which China can be effective is very much linked to domestic politics. Slovakia is still a democratic country. Nowadays the Slovakian government is fairly open to China, and foreign policy towards both China and Taiwan has changed substantially under Fico’s government. However, views of China are not uniform across the political spectrum in any of the CEE countries. It is also interesting that we can now clearly observe similarities in how the Fico and Orbán governments are approaching China. Similar to Orbán’s “Eastern Opening” policy, Slovakia has also started looking more eastward with Fico’s “All Azimuth Foreign Policy”. Fico’s big foreign trips last year included Beijing, Moscow, Hanoi, and Seoul. The visit to Vietnam was unofficial because, officially, bilateral relations are frozen. Fico also signed a strategic partnership with South Korea during the trip to Seoul and, interestingly, he used this to legitimise the signing of a strategic partnership with China. He also went to Brazil and Serbia, but didn’t make many trips to Western allies.
Zsuzsa: Has Taiwan been part of Fico’s eastern policy? To my knowledge, Taiwan has not received much official attention in Orbán’s Eastern Opening and the way things go, it is unlikely that Taiwan’s relations with Hungary will strengthen in the near future — at least not under Orbán. In contrast, Budapest is likely to prioritise Chinese investment. Hungary’s largest greenfield investments are now linked to Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs), so China has clearly become its largest foreign investor.
Matej: Taiwan is not part of Fico’s plan, but there is significant focus on China. His administration is in the process of setting up two large greenfield investments in Slovakia. The first one would be an EV factory by Volvo, which a lot of people think is a Swedish company. The brand may have originated in Sweden, but the owners are now Chinese. The other is Gotion, a Chinese battery producer. The investments were fully negotiated during the previous government, which had a very critical China policy, and a very open Taiwan policy. This goes to show that you can have an open and constructive relationship with Taiwan while still maintaining some form of economic operation with China — the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Slovakia is heavily reliant on the automotive sector, and older car makers are to some extent transitioning to EV production, which means they need access to battery suppliers. Some of our car companies are very dependent on the Chinese market, especially when it comes to Volkswagen — around 25 per cent of its production is for the Chinese market.
Zsuzsa: CEE governments and societies have taken varied approaches to managing their relationships with China and Taiwan. There is also more to a country than its government’s decisions and policies. In EU-Taiwan relations, parliamentary diplomacy has been very important, as are academic and cultural exchanges, and people-to-people contacts.
Where does Slovakia stand in Taiwanese perceptions, and where does Taiwan stand in Slovakian perceptions?
Matej: We need to go back a little bit to understand this. In 2020-2023, Slovakia was one of the front-runners in Europe in terms of Taiwan engagement. Many new forms of cooperation emerged at that time, even at the governmental level. A delegation led by the deputy speaker of the Slovakian parliament visited Taiwan, and another one was actually led by the deputy minister of the economy. Other countries went further, like Germany, which sent its minister of education to Taiwan. Since Fico returned for his fourth administration, this momentum of developing a Taiwan policy has been lost. Not much is happening at the political level. Things are still happening at the parliamentary level, but limited to the opposition parties, as well as on the sub-national level.
Zsuzsa: What has Taiwan done to maintain the momentum that was built up in 2023? The response to COVID enabled mutual awareness across the region. Mask diplomacy, followed by vaccine diplomacy helped make many people believe, and rightly so, that Central Eastern Europe has played an important role in securing more awareness of Taiwan in Europe. However, we are in 2025, we live in a fragmented world with a lot of uncertainty driven by different factors, disruptions in value chains, trade and economic security, and violation of international law as we saw with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, hybrid warfare and more.
Going forward, considering the increasingly uncertain and fragmented world taking shape, what is Taiwan doing right vis-à-vis Europe, and what could it do better to preserve the momentum that was reached under the Tsai administration (2016-2024), despite the external pressure and all the domestic challenges?
Matej: One thing that would certainly help, is for Taiwan to get its house in order — the domestic political chaos and polarisation is not helping. It's good for Taiwan to have a vibrant democracy and for different visions to compete when it comes to domestic politics. Given Taiwan’s precarious position, the parties really must find common ground to make their response to international challenges more effective. It is going to be difficult, if not impossible, to converge on how to navigate them, including threats from China, which, by extension, will impact its relations with the rest of the world.
What went fairly well in its ties with Slovakia, and other countries in the region, is that Taiwan has managed to build up links at multiple levels of engagement, not focused on just one segment. Interestingly, this was the biggest aspect China missed in its engagement with the region: it focused predominantly on the government and the incumbent political parties. Taiwan has done much better. Its activities are not limited purely to the government or the governing parties, but there are a lot of activities happening at the grassroots level, like supporting civil society, working with academia, and strengthening subnational engagement with cities and regions.
Taiwan needs to make sure that these ties are maintained, but this is going to be a challenge. We need proactivity on both sides to understand where our interests align, so that we can actually figure out where substantive cooperation can happen, that would be beneficial for both sides. Given its complicated international position, Taiwan needs to strike a balance between symbolic and substantive cooperation.
Zsuzsa: A relationship can only develop with effort from both sides. We in Europe must be very clear in the language that we use, that we have our own One China policy, which is not Beijing’s One China principle. Our cooperation with Taiwan has happened within our policy, and this has allowed us to maintain cooperation without diplomatic recognition. Most importantly, this does not violate our relationship with the PRC.
Perhaps we can end on a positive note that Taiwan and its like-minded partners in Europe can and should continue to strengthen their cooperation in a mutually beneficial and substantive way, rather than only symbolically, to help deter coercion and manipulation, and allow us to effectively address global problems.
Matej: It is also important for Taiwan to not lose hope and continue the work that was started within the CEE region. On the political front, Taiwan has many friends in the opposition who might not have a big influence right now but may be in power in the future, and Taiwan could easily rely on those relations again.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the discussants and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Biographies
Dr Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy is Affiliated Scholar at the Department of Political Science of Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Based in Taiwan, Zsuzsa is Assistant Professor at the National Dong Hwa University in Hualien. Her latest book, “Partners in Peace: Why Europe and Taiwan Matter to Each Other” was published in October 2024. Zsuzsa is a regular commentator in international media outlets.
Matej Šimalčík is the Executive Director of the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, a think tank that focuses on foreign and security policy issues related to the Indo-Pacific region and Europe-Asia relations. From January to August 2025, he is also a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR) under the Taiwan Fellowship program. Image credit: Unsplash/Timo Volz.