President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday congratulated European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on being re-elected for a second five-year term.
In a post on X, Lai congratulated von der Leyen and said he looked forward to “fostering stronger Taiwan-EU ties built on our shared commitment to human rights and democracy,” and thanked her for her “steadfast support for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also expressed its congratulations and thanked von der Leyen for showing support for and attaching importance to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait in a press release yesterday.
Photo: CNA
Von der Leyen, the first female president of the European Commission, was re-elected after winning 401 votes in the 720-seat legislature.
She won 383 votes in the previous election.
Von der Leyen said in the Political Guidelines 2024-2029 that the EU would work with Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia to deploy the full range of their combined statecraft “to deter China from unilaterally changing the status quo by military means, particularly over Taiwan.”
The ministry said that the European Commission has continuously strengthened its relationship with Taiwan under the leadership of von der Leyen.
Taiwan was referred to for the first time as an important partner in the Indo-Pacific region in the joint report “EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific” released in 2021, the ministry added.
As a like-minded partner that shares core values such as democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law, Taiwan would continue to collaborate closely with the bloc, the ministry said.
The ministry’s goals include: strengthening economic partnerships, building supply chain resilience in strategic industries such as semiconductors, and enhancing cooperation in various fields, including digital technology, green energy and technological culture, it added.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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