European Security Requires a Stronger Focus on Strategic Technologies
10 December 2024
Author: Petya Barzilska
The EU must adopt a risk-based approach to European security, where it comprehensively assesses existing and emerging risks and builds a clear, coordinated and prioritised risk-mitigation framework.
If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority: The EU needs to develop policies that strengthen European industrial and technological capacity and mitigate security threats in the context of increased global geopolitical risks. Strategic technological areas should be prioritised. This goes beyond public funding; it requires fostering innovation, enabling private investments in manufacturing, and creating regulatory frameworks that enhance global competitiveness and protect against current and emerging risks.
Facing the biggest war in Europe since World War II, multiple hybrid threats, including weaponised trade,1 and a loss of industrial competitiveness, Europe needs to quickly return its focus to practical steps to ensure its security.2 While the EU was established as a trade bloc, and defence remains a member state prerogative, the bloc has consolidated a common vision of security and defence3 and recently highlighted the importance of economic security.4 Now the EU needs to advance the rapid development of strategic technologies or technological areas that will allow Europe to deliver on those ambitions, both to protect its citizens and to play its role as a global security player.
The EU must adopt a risk-based approach to European security, where it comprehensively assesses existing and emerging risks and builds a clear, coordinated and prioritised risk-mitigation framework. This should serve as a base for the development of policies that strengthen European industrial and technological capacity and mitigate national security threats. A risk-based approach would guide investments and regulatory support, including trade and investment defence tools, for strategic industries and technologies. This would materialise into different types of support measures depending on the stage of technological innovation, scale-up and global competition. Such strategic, risk-oriented thinking would avoid misallocation of investment toward technologies that do not offer a decisive advantage and leverage.
Technologies that can improve European resilience and security need to be assessed based on a set of criteria designed to identify whether they address current and emerging risks. Strategic technologies are those that can contribute to technological superiority and physical and/or cyber security of critical infrastructure (CI), have the potential for domestic scale-up, increase domestic energy availability and/or affordability, contribute to domestic materials availability and/or reduce external materials dependencies on high-risk players, and also have dual-use potential.