Today, ELIAMEP publishes an important piece by Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission. This piece on the emerging post-pandemic reality is being published simultaneously by a small number of leading European think tanks, in their national language.

Josep Borrell’s piece is available here in Greek, published as a Policy Brief. You also read it in English here, at the website of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

In his piece Josep Borrell finds that the current crisis will likely magnify existing geopolitical dynamics and test the strength of Europe’s democratic systems.

Borrell highlights the importance of strategic autonomy as a priority for Europe, which cannot and should not be restricted to the military sphere alone. This strategic autonomy, he explains, must be built around the following six main pillars:

  • reducing our dependency, not only in the healthcare sector but also in the field of future technologies, such as batteries and artificial intelligence;
  • preventing market players from outside Europe from taking control of our strategic activities, which requires these activities to be clearly identified upstream;
  • protecting our critical infrastructure against cyberattacks;
  • ensuring that our decision-making autonomy will never be undermined by the offshoring of certain economic activities and the dependence that creates;
  • extending Europe’s regulatory powers to cover future technologies to prevent others from regulating in a way that is detrimental to us;
  • showing leadership in all areas where a lack of global governance is destroying the multilateral system.