By Shirin Bhandari | 2026-06-26

Germany could become the Philippines' seventh visiting-force agreement partner and the second from Europe after France, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said, as Manila continues expanding its network of defense partnerships across Europe and the Indo-Pacific.

The Philippines would be open to a visiting-force agreement with Germany when both governments are ready, although no immediate talks are planned, Marcos said on June 16 after talks on security with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Manila.

Steinmeier was making the first state visit to the Philippines by a German head of state in 63 years.

"With the volatility that is happening in the geopolitical world right now, the best path to stability is to have partnerships, is to have a wide base of alliances," Marcos said during a joint news conference with Steinmeier.

The Philippines has visiting-force agreements with the United States, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, France and Canada, giving foreign troops a legal framework for temporary military exercises in the country. The Philippine constitution bars foreign troops from establishing bases or conducting military activities in the country without an approved treaty.

Germany's Indo-Pacific role

Steinmeier's visit reflects Germany's growing security and economic engagement across the Indo-Pacific.

"The situation in the South China Sea … continues to be tense, and that gives us cause to be concerned," Steinmeier said, according to the Associated Press, noting the Indo-Pacific's economic importance.

The South China Sea carries trillions of dollars in global trade annually and is one of the world's busiest shipping routes.

Violations of international maritime law endanger freedom of navigation and are "cause for great concern in Europe," Steinmeier said, adding that the recent blockade of the Strait of Hormuz underscored those risks.

Steinmeier pledged Germany's continued support for the Philippine coast guard, the front-line force in the country's encounters with Chinese vessels in the South China Sea.

Marcos thanked Steinmeier for Germany's backing of the 2016 Arbitral Award, which invalidated China's claims to more than 80% of the South China Sea under the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Law of the Sea. Beijing did not take part in the arbitration and has rejected the ruling.

Germany was the Philippines' 12th-largest trading partner in 2025, with their trade totaling $5.39 billion.

At least 40 German companies operate in the Philippines, while more than 45,000 Filipinos, most of them nurses, live in Germany.

Economic partnership

The visit produced a multimillion-dollar lease agreement between Lufthansa Technik Philippines and the Bases Conversion and Development Authority to build a 157,000-square-meter aircraft maintenance hub in Clark.

The facility is expected to employ about 1,200 workers when operations begin in 2028.

The agreement would "provide economic security for the Philippines and train Filipinos in specialized industries" while reflecting a growing convergence between economic development and strategic security in the Indo-Pacific, Gary Ador Dionisio, a political science professor at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde in Manila, told the South China Morning Post.

Clark, a former U.S. military base, forms part of the Luzon Economic Corridor, a Philippines-U.S.-Japan infrastructure initiative coordinating investment across commercial, transport and industrial hubs.

The investment reinforces Clark's growing role as both an economic hub and a strategic gateway within the Luzon Economic Corridor.

The defense cooperation agreement signed by Manila and Berlin last year covers cybersecurity, armaments, logistics and UN peacekeeping operations. It provides a framework for any future visiting-force agreement.