A workshop entitled “EU Foreign Policy and the Response from East Asia” was held at Groningen University on May 31 and June 1 under the auspices of the Taiwan Studies Programme. The workshop was organized by Prof. Yeh Kuo-Chun from National Taiwan University who holds the Taiwan Studies Chair at Ghent University. It was co-hosted by Prof. Frank Gaenssmantel from the university’s Center of East Asian Studies and sponsored by the U4 network (a network comprising four universities in four different European countries: Ghent University, Groningen University, the University of Göttingen, and Ghent University, Groningen University, and Uppsala University), the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, and Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology.
 
The Ministry of Education in Taiwan signed an agreement with three U4-network universities in 2016—Ghent University, Groningen University, and the University of Göttingen—to set up a Taiwan Studies Programme. Under the programme, each academic year, a scholar from Taiwan is invited to teach, do research, and hold a workshop at one of the three participating universities. This second workshop was held at Groningen University and attended by scholars from the U4 network universities, the Free University of Brussels (VUB), the College of Europe, Leiden University, National Taiwan University, National Dong Hwa University, and Academia Sinica.
The two-day workshop had four sessions addressing four broad topic areas: Political Developments and EU–East Asia Relations; Governing Economic Relations between the EU and East Asia; Normative Power in Europe and East Asia; and the EU and China: Policies and Normative Stance.  It ended with a roundtable discussion on EU Values and the Response from East Asia: Looking Back and Future Prospects. A selection of the papers presented will be published in a special issue of the “Taiwanese Journal of Political Science”. 

Photo:Speakers from Taiwan: from left, Chang Teng-Chi (NTU), Prof. Yeh Kuo-Chun, Catherine Li (Soochow University), Su Hungdah (NTU), Chung Chi (Academia Sinica), and Wu Chien-Huei (Academia Sinica).