The European difficult goal of being strategically autonomous

Abstract

The issue of the “strategic autonomy of the European Union (EU)” is being subject to high interest within the EU policy circles. This term, originally propelled by France and mainly focused on defence, has evolved to include a much broader set of security considerations as the economy, the health or technology to just name a few. However, this concept still retains an important defence dimension. This paper deeply explores this issue, mainly in relation to the defence dimension, but looking at the organizational, industrial and technological aspects which are closely related, trying to identify the different constraints that may bound or endanger this autonomy.