The European Union has just released an important new blueprint for safeguarding its economic future. The document, Strengthening EU Economic Security, marks a decisive shift in how Brussels thinks about global competition, geopolitical pressure, and the vulnerabilities that come with deep economic interdependence. It builds on the 2023 European Economic Security Strategy but pushes the Union toward a far more proactive and strategic posture.
What emerges is a clear message: Europe intends to remain open to the world, but no longer naïve about the risks.
Why now? the geopolitical backdrop
The Communication opens with an observation that has become hard to ignore: global economic tools—tariffs, export controls, industrial subsidies, technology restrictions—are now routinely weaponised to advance geopolitical aims. The EU finds itself exposed to concentrated supply chains, state-driven market distortions, and security threats amplified by Russia’s war against Ukraine and by hybrid attacks targeting infrastructure and institutions.
In short, EU policymakers see a world where economic openness can be exploited, and where the resilience of Europe’s economy is becoming inseparable from its security.
A paradigm shift: from reactive to proactive
The EU already has many policy tools—trade defence instruments, foreign subsidies rules, cybersecurity frameworks, export controls, FDI screening, sanctions, research-security measures, and so on. However, these instruments were designed for specific sectors or narrow problems. The new approach urges something different:
Use all these tools strategically, in coordination, and with speed.
This includes accepting that, in some cases, Europe may need to bear short-term economic costs to reduce long-term vulnerabilities.
Six high-risk areas: where the EU will focus its efforts
The Commission identifies six domains where vulnerabilities are most acute and where action is urgent. These function as the backbone of the EU’s new economic-security agenda.
1. Strengthening supply chain resilience
Europe is dangerously dependent on foreign suppliers for raw materials, clean-tech components, mainstream semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, cloud services, and more. These dependencies can be weaponised, generate systemic risks, and slow down the green and digital transitions.
The EU wants to diversify supply, build internal capacity, and prevent market distortions—especially dumping or price manipulation that undermine diversification.
2. Attracting the right kind of foreign investment
Foreign investment is essential for innovation and jobs, but some inbound investment can create new dependencies, expose sensitive technologies, or shift control of critical infrastructure.
The Commission aims to keep the EU open while conditioning investments when needed and encouraging technology transfer rather than one-way extraction.
3. Supporting Europe’s defence, space and other strategic industries
The war in Ukraine and rising tensions have exposed production bottlenecks and vulnerabilities in defence, aerospace, shipping, and dual-use technologies.
The EU plans to scale up industrial capacity, reduce reliance on high-risk suppliers, pool demand, support innovation, and shorten technology cycles—especially for fast-evolving systems like drones.
4. Developing and maintaining leadership in critical technologies
Quantum computing, AI, semiconductors, and biotech are at the heart of future economic and military power.
The Commission warns that foreign states are attempting to acquire EU know-how through acquisitions, partnerships, or reverse engineering. Europe will step up research-security measures, funding, monitoring of start-ups, and protection of intellectual property.
5. Preventing access to sensitive data and information
From connected vehicles to sequencing platforms to telecom infrastructure, hardware and software supplied by high-risk actors can create openings for espionage, data extraction, or sabotage.
The EU plans to tighten cybersecurity requirements, identify high-risk suppliers, and ensure that sensitive data cannot be accessed through ownership or control of EU firms.
6. Protecting critical infrastructure
Energy grids, ports, satellites, transport corridors, and communications networks face physical, cyber, and hybrid threats.
The EU’s goal: restrict high-risk actors from controlling or operating critical infrastructure, strengthen cybersecurity, build redundancy, and ensure trusted suppliers for key components such as solar inverters.
Building the intelligence and coordination required
A striking feature of the new strategy is the emphasis on information: mapping dependencies, monitoring foreign behaviour, sharing classified intelligence with Member States, and creating an Economic Security Information Hub to consolidate data across EU networks. The EU also wants closer ties with industry, which it sees as the “front line” of economic security.
Deploying and expanding the EU toolbox
The Communication lays out dozens of concrete policy moves, including:
- Using EU funding strategically to support resilience and exclude high-risk entities.
- Strengthening FDI screening and monitoring portfolio investments.
- Evaluating the Dual-Use Regulation to adapt export controls to new geopolitical realities.
- Leveraging trade defence when economic security is at stake.
- Creating an EU mechanism to track vulnerable start-ups in critical technologies.
- Developing European preference criteria in public procurement for strategic sectors.
- Introducing new acts: Chips Act 2.0, Quantum Act, Cloud and AI Development Act.
- Revising the Cybersecurity Act to restrict high-risk suppliers in critical infrastructure.
The common thread is a more assertive Europe—one that shapes markets rather than merely reacting to them.
A strategic Europe in a less friendly world
The final message of the document is unambiguous: the EU still believes in open, rules-based trade and international cooperation. But openness requires resilience.
By identifying vulnerabilities, coordinating tools, partnering with like-minded countries, and asking industry to play its part, the EU aims to secure the foundations of its prosperity in an era where markets and geopolitics are inseparable.
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The next steps: how the EU plans to turn its economic security strategy into concrete action
The European Economic Security: The Next Steps, marks the transition from high-level strategy to practical implementation. While the EU’s Economic Security Strategy defined the concerns, priorities, and overall vision, this new roadmap clarifies how the Commission intends to act—by reshaping existing tools and creating new ones designed to close critical vulnerabilities across supply chains, technology, and investment flows.
Adapting existing tools
Funding as a strategic instrument
The Commission will redirect EU funding to projects that strengthen economic security and resilience. This includes encouraging the European Investment Bank and national promotional banks to prioritise companies that reduce over-dependence on high-risk foreign suppliers. EU financial support is therefore being reframed not just as an engine of competitiveness, but as a tool of geopolitical risk management.
Harmonising foreign investment screening
To ensure consistency across the Single Market, the Commission will develop guidelines to align Member States’ screening practices. The objective is clear: an investment with strategic implications should receive the same scrutiny regardless of where it enters the EU. This responds to concerns about loopholes and fragmented assessments that could be exploited by high-risk actors.
The section of the Joint Communication referring to future guidelines on the interaction between EU-level requirements and national screening mechanisms in the financial sector is particularly problematic, because it suggests a possible implicit expansion of the Commission’s role beyond what the FDI Regulation provides.
The idea that Brussels might define how EU and national instruments should be coordinated in a field already governed by a dense supervisory architecture — the ECB, national authorities, ESMA, and the EBA — raises questions about compliance with the principle of conferral and with the very nature of FDI screening, which is designed to protect national security rather than financial stability.
The risk is that of a form of “creeping harmonisation,” where formally non-binding guidelines produce substantive effects that narrow Member States’ discretion in a domain where they retain constitutionally sensitive competences. In this light, the reference to guidelines appears less a technical clarification and more an attempt by the Commission to consolidate a quasi-supervisory role.
Updating export controls
An evaluation of the Dual-Use Export Control Regulation is scheduled for 2026. The question is whether the current framework can keep pace with rapid geopolitical change—particularly in emerging technologies with dual military–civilian use. The review will assess whether additional controls or structural reforms are needed to avoid unintended knowledge transfers.
Integrating security into trade defence
Future trade defence investigations will include economic security considerations, especially when unfair commercial practices create or worsen strategic dependencies for the EU. The shift signals a broader interpretation of “harm,” extending beyond market distortion to encompass potential geopolitical leverage.
Competition and the fight against distorting subsidies
The Commission intends to fully deploy the Foreign Subsidies Regulation and to encourage the use of State aid instruments to reinforce domestic industrial capacity. The aim is to ensure that non-market advantages granted by third countries cannot undermine Europe’s strategic sectors.
Creating new tools
Monitoring start-ups in critical technologies
A pilot project will track start-ups operating in sensitive technological areas to identify firms vulnerable to hostile foreign acquisitions. This reflects growing concern that cutting-edge European innovation may be lost long before it reaches maturity, undermining long-term technological leadership.
Oversight of portfolio investments
The document calls on Member States to monitor portfolio investments in high-risk sectors—an area not currently covered by the FDI screening framework. The move acknowledges that influence, access to data, or strategic positioning can occur even without acquiring formal control.
Revising the blocking statute
A reform of the EU’s Blocking Statute aims to protect European businesses and citizens from the extraterritorial application of foreign sanctions. Strengthening this instrument is essential for shielding EU operators from geopolitical pressure applied through legal or financial channels.
European preference in public procurement
The Commission plans to revise the Public Procurement Directives to introduce preference criteria for European suppliers in specific strategic sectors. The goal is twofold: support industrial capacity at home and reduce the security risks associated with reliance on non-EU suppliers in sensitive domains.
Reducing technological dependencies
Upcoming legislative initiatives—including Chips Act 2.0, the Quantum Act, the Cloud and AI Development Act, and the Strategy on Open Source—will incorporate incentives for companies to diversify suppliers and avoid excessive reliance on high-risk actors. These measures recognise that technological ecosystems themselves have become arenas of geopolitical contestation.