11 June 2026
The security framework that enabled both Taiwan and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to prosper is eroding under intensifying great-power competition. As interdependencies rise, a Taiwan Strait contingency increasingly tests the ability to uphold the security agenda – not only of the region, but also of Europe as a whole.
Interpreting these developments requires a strategic foresight approach, which Visegrad Insight has developed over many years through its extensive network of fellows and experts from Central Europe, the US and Taiwan, among others. Building on the insights from strategic workshops conducted by Visegrad Insight in 2025, this Policy Brief is intended to give decision-makers the wider context they need to act with greater confidence and situational awareness, and to see their own choices as part of a larger and genuinely consequential story.
Wojciech Przybylski – political analyst who leads strategic foresight on EU affairs, Editor-in-Chief of Visegrad Insight, President of the Res Publica Foundation
Marcin Jerzewski – political scientist and sinologist, Marcin Król Fellow at Visegrad Insight, Head of the Taiwan Office of European Values Center for Security Policy
Luca Flora Soltész – contributing editor at Visegrad Insight
Natalia Ziemińska – author and contributing editor of the Lukasiewicz – Institute of Innovation and Technology (ITECH) special data supplement
We would particularly like to thank the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for its initial support that enabled the authors to conduct scenario-based workshops with stakeholders and the Lukasiewicz – Institute of Innovation and Technology (ITECH), for adding the insights underpinning the economic sections of this brief and co-publishing this report. We also gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Simon Xiao, an undergraduate student at Princeton University, who prepared background research as a Visegrad Insight’s 2025 Junior Fellow.
A new generation of Taiwanese companies is finding its footing in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and the significance of this development extends well beyond commerce and into economic and democratic security.
Both CEE and Taiwan share a formative experience as they are among the most successful stories of the third wave of democratisation, having moved from authoritarian rule to open, market-based governance and embedded themselves in rules-based international structures. That shared trajectory now faces a common stress test. The contest between China and the US is the new defining challenge of the present age, placing middle power cooperation as an essential element of democratic resilience amidst the great-power rivalry. CEE and Taiwan are not bystanders to that architecture – they are among its most consequential building blocks.
This report draws on Visegrad Insight’s strategic foresight project that pooled research and stakeholders to map what the deepening interdependence between CEE and Taiwan means across four plausible stages of cross-strait escalation — from low-intensity grey-zone pressure to full-scale conflict. Each stage carries distinct risks for CEE supply chains, industrial structures and political cohesion, but each also opens specific windows for action. Countries that move early to integrate Taiwan into their economic security planning, diversify critical supply chains and build institutional frameworks for contingency coordination stand to strengthen their industrial base and consolidate a strategic role within the European Union (EU) and NATO that reactive governments will struggle to claim later. The supportive data presented by Łukasiewicz – ITECH show that CEE is already more exposed to Taiwan Strait dynamics than most European policymakers recognise — and that the same integration which creates vulnerability is, if managed well, a foundation for competitive advantage.
The principal audience for this analysis is those who stand at the first line of interaction between the two regions – business leaders making sourcing and investment decisions, and local and regional politicians in both CEE and Taiwan who shape the practical conditions under which cooperation takes place. Grand strategy is made at the top, but it is tested and sustained at their level.
Few questions feel more remote from the everyday concerns of Central European countries than the fate of Taiwan, some nine thousand kilometres away, and few, on closer inspection, prove more immediate. The stability of the Taiwan Strait touches our region directly, embedded in the circuits that power our cars and factories, our energy grids and hospitals, and, increasingly, the technologies on which our security depends.
The trade data behind this relationship tells also a story – over the past five years, the dependence of CEE on Taiwanese semiconductors and electronic components has deepened markedly. That dependence is a measure of trust as much as of risk. It reflects how much our prosperity already rests on the openness, ingenuity and reliability of a fellow democracy that has built, against considerable odds, one of the most sophisticated industrial ecosystems in the world.
That is why our two institutions came together to produce this report. The Res Publica Foundation and its Visegrad Insight platform have long worked to anticipate the strategic choices facing Central Europe rather than merely react to them. Łukasiewicz – ITECH sits at the meeting point of industrial upgrading, security and defence, and European technology policy. Our conviction is straightforward: Taiwan is both a critical source of strategic technologies and a compelling example of democratic resilience under sustained pressure, offering valuable lessons for countries across our region.
The strategic-foresight method that runs through these pages addresses something our region too rarely does well. It thinks across a spectrum of scenarios, from grey-zone coercion to open confrontation, and asks what each would mean for our economies.
The recommendations that follow are deliberately practical, and we commend them to policymakers, business leaders and our partners in the Indo-Pacific. This report’s purpose is to ensure that, when it matters, Central Europe is caught neither materially unprepared nor politically irresolute.