When France's outgoing representative to Taiwan, Franck Paris (龍燁), took the podium at the Bastille Day reception in Taipei on July 14, 2026, the guest list around him told a story that no formal diplomatic communiqué could have conveyed. Taiwan's defense minister, foreign minister, and national security council secretary-general were seated in the same room. Flower wreaths sent by the commanders of Taiwan's army, air force, and National Defense University lined the entrance — each wreath bearing the sender's name in plain view.
French President Emmanuel Macron (馬克宏) will step down in May 2027 having visited China four times as head of state, most recently in December 2025. Yet the relationship his government has quietly built with Taiwan is, by almost any practical measure, the most substantive security partnership that Taipei holds with any European capital.
Taiwan's Security Chiefs Fill France's Bastille Day Guest List
The July 14 reception at the Regent Taipei drew Taiwan's highest-ranking national security officials in recent memory. Defense Minister Wellington Koo (顧立雄), NSC Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), and Environment Minister Peng Chi-ming (彭啟明) were among those who attended in person, joined by multiple vice-ministerial officials from across the cabinet.
Deputy Foreign Minister François Chihchung Wu (吳志中), who served as Taiwan's representative in Paris from 2018, framed the contrast on social media. When he attended the same reception eight years ago, he wrote, he was the sole government minister present. "The progress in relations between Taiwan and France and European countries in recent years is something that would have been unimaginable not long ago," he said.
France, Europe's third-largest economy and one of only two nuclear-armed states on the continent alongside the United Kingdom, has expanded its institutional ties with Taiwan from academic and cultural exchanges a decade ago into science, technology, and innovation. Unusually for a country without formal diplomatic relations with Taipei, Taiwanese minister-level officials are permitted to enter France and meet directly with their French counterparts.
France, Germany, and the UK Warn Beijing Against Unilateral Change
In his Bastille Day remarks, Paris also revisited a joint statement issued on June 24 by France's Office in Taipei, the British Office Taipei, and the German Institute Taipei. The three offices said they had taken note of recent Chinese activities in waters east of Taiwan and described those activities as a threat to regional stability, freedom of navigation, and international shipping safety. The statement called on all parties to refrain from any unilateral attempt to alter the status quo, and specifically opposed the use of force, threats, or coercion.
Paris described that declaration as echoing a G7 statement released on June 17 that also opposed moves to change the cross-strait status quo. He characterized both documents as "a clear signal of solidarity between ourselves and Taiwan, based on shared values and strategic interests."
Diplomatic declarations have been backed by a pattern of naval deployments that few European countries can match. French frigates have transited the Taiwan Strait three times since 2019: the FS Vendémiaire passed through in April 2019, and the FS Prairial did so in both April 2023 and October 2024.
Those strait transits sit alongside a broader Indo-Pacific deployment tempo. France sends its annual "Jeanne d'Arc" task group on a roughly five-month mission to the Asia-Pacific each year — typically an amphibious assault ship, a La Fayette-class frigate, and around 800 personnel. In both 2025 and the first half of 2026, the group visited Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, and India, conducting joint exercises with Singapore and the Philippines along the way.
The deployments reached a different scale entirely between November 2024 and April 2025, when France sent the Charles de Gaulle nuclear-powered carrier strike group through the Indian Ocean and into East Asian waters — the first time a French aircraft carrier had operated in the region since the 1960s and the largest French naval deployment in recent years.
France Becomes First Major Power to Codify Taiwan Strait Protections
The most structurally significant move came in August 2023, when the French parliament passed a seven-year Military Programming Law covering 2024 to 2030. At €413.3 billion, it represented the largest defense budget in French history. The law also formally affirmed France's status as an Indo-Pacific power committed to upholding freedom of navigation — specifically naming the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait — as central to regional peace and stability.
In doing so, France became the first major power in the world to enshrine protections for Taiwan Strait freedom of navigation in domestic legislation. It was also the first time Taiwan had appeared by name in any French law.
Strategic Autonomy and Pacific Territories Drive France's Engagement
Why is France — geographically rooted in Europe, without formal diplomatic ties to Taipei, and with a president who has made multiple state visits to Beijing — so consistent in its security engagement with Taiwan? Kuo Yu-jen (郭育仁), a professor at National Sun Yat-sen University's Institute of China and Asia-Pacific Studies and deputy director of the National Policy Foundation think tank in Taipei, points to three structural factors.
The first is France's enduring doctrine of strategic autonomy. "Among all European countries, France is the one that most insists on having a strategic pillar distinct from the United States," Kuo said. "That national character has been consistent from the de Gaulle era to the present — France must have its own strategic thinking and positioning. That is why its international behavior, including its engagement with Taiwan, differs from other European countries."
The second is geography — or more precisely, the fact that France is not only a European country. Its overseas territories in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific, including New Caledonia and French Polynesia, are home to more than one million French citizens and anchor an extended exclusive economic zone that stretches deep into the Indo-Pacific. "Those territories are directly tied to France's national security and economic lifeline," Kuo said — which is why, he argued, French lawmakers felt compelled to write Taiwan Strait freedom of navigation into the 2023 defense law.
The third factor is permanent military presence. France maintains 10 to 12 warships and more than 30 military aircraft on continuous deployment across its Indo-Pacific territories, Kuo noted — a standing force posture that spans land, sea, and air and gives Paris operational credibility to match its declaratory commitments.
Adding to that posture, the Philippines recently concluded a Status of Visiting Forces Agreement with France — following a similar pact Manila signed with Japan — allowing French troops to legally operate on Philippine soil and making joint exercises considerably easier. Analysts see the agreement as another indicator of France's expanding operational footprint in a region where it has made clear it intends to stay.
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