More than two years after launching its economic security strategy and with the world swept up in economic warfare, the European Union still cannot decide what economic security means.
Despite this, under the strain of US tariffs and Chinese export controls, the bloc is preparing to unveil a new “economic security doctrine” in early December, which will provide bureaucrats with a dashboard of all the weapons at its disposal and the levers to pull – even as progress on its 2023 strategy appears to have stalled.
“It came from lessons of the past mandate. We realised that today everything could be weaponised … look at our tools, trade defence instruments, export controls – are they fast enough? Are they robust enough?” said trade and economic security commissioner Maros Sefcovic on Thursday, describing the doctrine.
It will seek to give Brussels powers to move more quickly and asymmetrically when China, the US or any other power weaponises Europe’s vulnerabilities – a trend which is happening with alarming frequency.
“Do we have a luxury of time to assess a case for more than a year when you see that the other big powers can just change their whole policy overnight?” Sefcovic said.
But even before it has been proposed, the doctrine is being challenged by some who believe that going down the weaponised trade route could backfire.
On a more basic level, meanwhile, officials and experts openly admit that several years into their economic security journey, they still do not really know what it is.
“It is very true that we don’t have a clear definition of economic security, which is kind of a problem when we’re talking about it,” said Michael Lund Jeppesen, director for economic security at the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at an EU-hosted trade policy day in Brussels on Thursday.
Speaking at the same event, Debora Revoltella, chief economist at the European Investment Bank, made a similar admission.
“So we know, more or less … we don’t have a definition yet … but we know what the challenges are. It’s an evolving pattern, and it requires working together, European member states, among themselves, single market thinking, but also with like-minded partners,” Revoltella said.
A month ago at an event in Dublin, the European Commission’s own economic security director Peter Sandler volunteered that “economic security is not a concept which has been defined in any detail yet by the European Commission”.
Nonetheless, the ill-defined term will be front of mind on Monday when foreign ministers from the EU’s 27 member states meet for talks, with both the US and China on the agenda.
Despite the pummelling Washington has handed the bloc this year, its commerce and trade chiefs have been invited to meet the ministers over lunch, with Beijing set to be on the menu.