In guidelines published on Wednesday 25 March, the European Commission has sounded the alarm and is calling on EU Member States to safeguard all assets deemed “essential for our security and public order” (see EUROPE B12454A12).
Indeed, the wake-up call is brutal in the EU: one of the first lessons of the health crisis the EU is going through, is its extreme dependence on global value chains, including China, deemed the 'factory of the world' (see EUROPE B12444A13).
This dependence has...