PARIS/MANILA — The Philippines and France have signed a new visiting forces agreement that will allow their militaries to train on each other’s territory, opening a new chapter in a fast-expanding security relationship shaped by mounting friction in the South China Sea.

The agreement was signed on March 26 in Paris by Gilberto Teodoro Jr., the Philippine defense secretary, and Catherine Vautrin, France’s minister for the armed forces and veterans. Philippine and French officials said the pact would provide the legal framework needed for joint activities while reinforcing their shared support for a rules-based international order.

The deal carries significance beyond its legal language. It is France’s first such arrangement with the Philippines and Manila’s first visiting-forces pact with a European power, extending a defense network that already includes the United States, Australia, Japan and New Zealand. Philippine officials have cast the accord as part of a broader strategy to widen partnerships without abandoning diplomacy, a balancing act that has become central to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s foreign and security policy.

Its timing was striking. The agreement came just a day after Philippine authorities said a Chinese frigate carried out an “unsafe and unprofessional” maneuver near Thitu Island, forcing a Philippine Navy vessel to take evasive action to avoid a collision. That episode, one of a series of increasingly sharp maritime encounters, underscored why Manila has been accelerating defense coordination with like-minded partners even as it continues to press its claims through law and diplomacy.

In the language of both governments, the pact is about deterrence, interoperability and legal predictability. In strategic terms, it also signals France’s growing willingness to play a steadier security role in the Indo-Pacific. French deployments in recent months, including the carrier strike group mission linked to Operation Clemenceau 25, were presented by Paris and Manila as demonstrations of support for freedom of navigation and international law in waters where coercion has become increasingly normalized.

The South China Sea remains one of the world’s most consequential maritime corridors. A widely cited estimate from the CSIS ChinaPower Project puts trade transiting the waterway at about $3.4 trillion in 2016, illustrating why disruptions there carry consequences well beyond the region. At the center of the dispute is China’s sweeping claim over most of the sea, a position rejected by a 2016 arbitral ruling that found Beijing’s asserted historic-rights claim had no lawful basis under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. China has continued to reject that ruling.

The latest regional response has not been purely military. On March 28, Manila and Beijing resumed high-level consultations over the South China Sea for the first time since January 2025, discussing maritime concerns alongside oil, gas, energy and fertilizer security. That development suggests that the Philippines is pursuing a two-track approach: building external deterrence through new defense arrangements while keeping diplomatic channels open with China in hopes of reducing the risk of crisis at sea.

For Manila, the message is increasingly clear: alliances and access arrangements are no longer being treated as exceptional measures but as part of the regular architecture of national defense. For France, the agreement is another sign that European powers are no longer content to watch the Indo-Pacific from a distance. And for Beijing, the pact is likely to be read as further evidence that pressure in disputed waters is prompting its neighbors to knit themselves more tightly into overlapping security coalitions.