Reconciling European Defence and the Energy Transition, Sovereignty and Sustainability: a strategic imperative for Europeans

From 2019 onwards, the European Union made the European Green Deal its “normative compass”, structuring its policies around the objective of climate neutrality. Yet the strategic environment has since deteriorated dramatically.

The invasion of Ukraine in 2022, triggered a profound shift towards an existential logic, in which security once again became the primary precondition for public action. This urgency is now embodied in the White Paper for European Defence – Readiness 2030, which sets a critical timeframe: Europe has fewer than six years to undertake a massive and coordinated rearmament in preparation for the possibility of high-intensity warfare on its own territory.

This strategic reorientation has taken place in a context of cascading crises that increasingly reveal the interdependence between security, energy and climate dynamics. The war in Ukraine exposed Europe’s vulnerability to energy coercion and fossil fuel dependency.

More recently, escalating tensions in the Gulf following Israeli and American strikes against Iran have once again demonstrated how quickly geopolitical shocks can disrupt global energy markets and strategic supply chains.

Each new crisis reinforces the same conclusion: reconciling security, competitiveness and climate objectives is no longer a theoretical debate but an operational necessity.