EU and South Korea close ranks against a common threat

1. The EU and South Korea issued their strongest joint language yet on Russia-North Korea military cooperation, calling on both Moscow and Pyongyang to halt arms transfers, troop deployments, and sanctions evasion activities that have enabled Russia’s continued war in Ukraine.

2. The summit advanced the Security and Defense Partnership signed between the two countries in November 2024, with both sides agreeing to launch negotiations on a classified information-sharing agreement, a step toward defense-industrial cooperation that goes beyond diplomatic statements.

3. Beyond the Korean Peninsula, the joint statement extended EU-South Korea security language to the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and the Strait of Hormuz, reflecting a shared premise that European and Indo-Pacific security are no longer separable.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met with European Council President António Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels on June 10 for the 11th EU-Republic of Korea (ROK) summit. The meeting marked Lee’s first summit-level engagement with EU leadership since taking office in June 2025. It produced a series of concrete outcomes spanning security, trade, and technology, and came at a moment when both sides had been working to build new alliances amid overlapping pressures from US tariff uncertainty to Chinese economic coercion and the continued fallout of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The summit is the first between the EU and South Korea in three years, and it reflects how both partners have repositioned each other within a broader coalition-building effort rather than treating the bilateral relationship as a standalone track.

Condemning Russia-North Korea military cooperation

The most pointed language in the summit targeted the deepening military relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang. The two sides strongly condemned what they called illegal military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, arguing that such cooperation enables Russia to continue its war against Ukraine. Since 2023, North Korea has supplied Russia with an estimated 12 million artillery shells, ballistic missiles, and multiple rocket systems, and has deployed between 14,000 and 15,000 troops to fight alongside Russian forces. Lee, Costa, and von der Leyen called on both Moscow and Pyongyang to halt weapons transfers, troop deployments, and other forms of military support, and to comply with the UN Charter and relevant Security Council resolutions.

On North Korea’s weapons programs, the joint statement expressed grave concern and urged Pyongyang to return to full compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the international agreement that prohibits non-nuclear-weapon states from acquiring or developing nuclear weapons, and its International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards agreement. The two sides stated that North Korea will never be accepted as a nuclear-weapon state under the NPT or granted any other special status, and they called on all UN member states to fully implement existing sanctions.

This language was built on a broader multilateral effort. In late May, the EU joined the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Canada, and other partners in a statement welcoming a UN Security Council briefing that documented continued North Korean sanctions evasion through maritime activity, including manipulated ship-tracking signals and disguised port calls used to move coal and iron ore in violation of existing resolutions. The Brussels statement reinforced that the EU and South Korea remain aligned within this wider coalition on sanctions enforcement.

At the same time, the two sides reaffirmed support for inter-Korean engagement. The joint statement backed Seoul’s efforts to resume inter-Korean dialogue through proactive de-escalation and confidence-building measures, framing this as a path toward peaceful coexistence on the peninsula rather than as a contradiction of the sanctions-focused language elsewhere in the text.

Advancing the security and defense partnership

Beyond North Korea, the summit produced tangible movement on the EU-ROK Security and Defense Partnership, which was first signed in November 2024 and formalized a relationship that had been developing since the 2023 EU-ROK summit in Seoul. The partnership covers a wide range of areas of cooperation, including defense industry exchanges, maritime security, counterterrorism, and cybersecurity. The leaders welcomed the first steps in implementing it, including exchanges of information on defense industry matters between the two sides.

The most concrete deliverable on this front was an agreement to begin negotiations on an information security pact. Lee announced that the two sides agreed to launch negotiations on an agreement to protect classified information, describing it as a step toward safely exchanging sensitive information and pursuing joint industrial and research cooperation. Lee linked the initiative to the geopolitical environment, noting that security in the Indo-Pacific and Europe has become increasingly interconnected. The move matters because a classified information-sharing agreement is a prerequisite for the kind of defense-industrial cooperation that both sides have signaled interest in developing.

The summit also touched on security concerns beyond the Korean Peninsula. The two sides reaffirmed support for freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and stressed the importance of preserving peace across the Taiwan Strait, while opposing unilateral attempts to alter the status quo in the Indo-Pacific. The three leaders also called for unimpeded passage through the Strait of Hormuz, extending the partnership’s security language well beyond its traditional regional focus.

Trade, Ukraine, and broader economic ties

Economic cooperation was another central pillar of the summit, anchored in the EU-ROK Free Trade Agreement, which has been in place for over a decade. During the summit, the two sides signed a Digital Trade Agreement to boost digital trade cooperation while strengthening online consumer protection and cybersecurity. The agreement establishes binding rules on cross-border data flows, electronic contracts, and source code protection, but it still requires approval by the European Parliament before it enters into force. The leaders also agreed to establish a high-level economic dialogue to deepen cooperation on economic security, trade, and industrial policy.

On Ukraine, the leaders committed to supporting Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction, including through the Ukraine Donor Platform and the upcoming Ukraine Recovery Conference. They emphasized that the consistent implementation of sanctions remains crucial to this effort, tying the Ukraine-focused language back to the condemnation of Russia’s cooperation with North Korea.

Ambitions and their limits

South Korea has a concrete interest in accessing EU defense funding mechanisms, including the Security Action for Europe instrument. The EU, in turn, has reasons of its own: Poland’s large-scale procurement of K2 tanks, K9 howitzers, and FA-50 aircraft since 2022 has demonstrated that South Korean defense industrial capacity is a credible and agile alternative to traditional European suppliers.

The Brussels summit suggests that the EU-ROK relationship is increasingly organized around the premise that European and Indo-Pacific security are no longer separable. The push toward an information security pact, however incremental at its current stage, signals an intent to build the institutional plumbing needed for deeper defense-industrial cooperation rather than relying solely on statements of solidarity.

At the same time, the breadth of the joint statement, spanning the Korean Peninsula, Ukraine, the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and the Strait of Hormuz, illustrates both the ambition and the potential strain of the partnership. Whether Brussels and Seoul can translate this expansive agenda into sustained policy coordination, particularly as the security and defense pillar moves from negotiation to implementation, will likely shape how the relationship is assessed at the next summit.