The European Union no longer treats trade, industry and finance as separate from geopolitics. In its current priorities, Brussels explicitly links competitiveness, defence, migration, enlargement and a new economic foreign policy, a sign that the bloc now sees resilience as a strategic asset rather than a purely economic goal.[2]
That shift reflects the pressure of great-power rivalry and the weaponization of interdependence, which has pushed the EU toward a more geopolitical approach to economic statecraft.[6] In plain terms, Europe is trying to reduce the ways others can use its dependencies against it.
Bruegel’s latest work argues that if Europe wants to shape events rather than absorb them, it must build strategic autonomy in defence, technology, finance and critical raw materials.[4] That list reads like an industrial policy agenda, but it is also a vulnerability map.
This is why the debate in Europe has moved beyond tariffs and toward capacity. The issue is not only whether the EU can protect its companies, but whether it can secure the inputs, capital and innovation base needed to keep those companies competitive in a harsher world.[2][4]
The deeper risk is that Europe could become efficient at writing rules and weak at absorbing shocks. The EU’s own agenda promises a business-friendly environment, quality jobs, a circular and resilient economy, and accelerated investment.[2] The test is whether those words can become more than a response to decline.
