Economic Security And Critical Dependencies

Europe’s strategic autonomy depends on its ability to identify and manage the external dependencies that sustain its energy system, industrial production, digital infrastructure, healthcare, financial networks and defence capabilities. Interdependence becomes a security vulnerability when an essential input, technology, service or infrastructure is concentrated in a limited number of suppliers, difficult to replace and exposed to political pressure, export restrictions, cyber compromise, sabotage or extraterritorial control. Economic security therefore requires selective risk reduction rather than economic isolation, combining diversification, allied sourcing, domestic industrial capacity, infrastructure resilience and protection against technology leakage.

The report first examines the development of the European economic-security doctrine and its legal and regulatory architecture. It then maps critical dependencies across energy, raw materials, semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, industrial software, medicines, maritime routes, undersea cables, telecommunications, financial systems and defence supply chains. A third section analyses technology transfer, infrastructure disruption and the principal instruments of economic coercion.

The final section converts this dependency map into a structured framework for identifying companies that control scarce processes, strategic assets or industrial capabilities capable of reducing verified European vulnerabilities. Europe’s economic security problem is not reducible to trade balances, industrial policy, geopolitical rhetoric or the decoupling debate. It is a question of whether the Union and its close partners can preserve civil continuity, military readiness, technological capability and financial stability when a narrow set of externally controlled inputs, services, infrastructures or knowledge channels can be disrupted, withheld, manipulated or acquired.