Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovakia have put forward ideas for strengthening the EU’s open strategic autonomy in a non-paper published on Wednesday 19 July. Among other things, the document aims to “identify policy areas that require increased attention” in order to strengthen open strategic autonomy.
The five countries are also suggesting the creation of an “inter-directorate-general” structure at the European Commission to oversee this work. In addition, they say open strategic autonomy should be part of the portfolio of one of the Commission’s Vice-Presidents.
The document identifies three main “lines of effort” to create genuine open strategic autonomy: - reinforcing the EU’s political-economic foundations; - mitigating high-risk strategic dependencies; - expanding the EU’s capacity for geopolitical action.
The recommendations under the first of these three pillars largely align with the ideas put forward by the Commission and the EU Council in their work on long-term competitiveness (see EUROPE 13143/3, 13180/2). The harmonisation of the EU’s regulatory framework and the fight against barriers to free movement within the single market are also mentioned.
It is also important to invest in training the workforce and in research and development: “We should strive to meet the public and private expenditure goal of spending 3% of GDP on research and development”, say the five countries.
Economic security is an integral part of strategic autonomy, as the authors of the document recall. Under their second pillar on reducing strategic dependencies, they suggest working on the basis of the Commission’s recent proposals in this area (see EUROPE 13188/2).
They go even further: there needs to be “closer coordination between Member States on investment screening and export control measures, as well as on countering unwanted knowledge transfer”, say the five member countries.
However, they point out that the EU must remain as open as possible and that free trade agreements are a very good tool for the EU’s resilience, in their view.
Finally, for the document authors, open strategic autonomy must also involve geopolitics and in particular the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). The effectiveness of the CFSP can, for example, be enhanced through the decision-making process, they argue.
They also recommend greater EU-NATO cooperation, which can be achieved through institutional cooperation and a roadmap that “operationalises cooperation across the board”.
See the document: https://aeur.eu/f/86e (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)