The new weapons of European sovereignty

On 9 May, people march in arms in Moscow — in the countries of the Union, peace and prosperity are celebrated, often timidly. But what are we really celebrating when war has returned to Europe and the economy is in crisis? Faced with new empires, Agathe Cagé and Sylvie Matelly call for the rearmament of European sovereignty to meet democratic expectations on the continent.

The last few weeks have been rich in summits, declarations of intent and proposals to ‘rearm Europe’. Faced with the unexpected rapprochement between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, Europeans seem to have finally understood that they must successfully navigate the continent’s geopolitical transition. Confronted with an aggressive Russia, an unpredictable American ally and an offensive China, the rearmament of Europe is on everyone’s lips and in everyone’s minds. However, it must be noted that, until now, this has mostly given rise to debates focused primarily on the amount of defence spending increases to be expected, or on the trade-offs between social and military spending, as if rearming were limited to purchasing weapons of European preference.

However, it seems that the essential issue in this debate is being overlooked, namely the question of sovereignty. Sovereignty must be the driving force behind Europe’s comprehensive rearmament. Indeed, if Europe needs to rearm, it is first and foremost because it is threatened not only by an aggressive country on its eastern flank, but also by certain American statements and actions. The resulting balance of power requires Europe to give itself the means to be fully free in all areas to determine its own future and resources (which does not mean, as the President of the United States seems to think, being isolated and withdrawn).

The European Union and its member countries have demonstrated, in the face of the various crises that have struck them in recent years, a strong capacity for resilience that has enabled them to overcome geopolitical tensions, pandemics and financial crises.

In the new world order, where cooperation seems to be giving way more and more to competition, or even predation, this resilience alone may prove insufficient. That is why Europeans must take a further step: that of building a solid and ambitious European sovereignty.

The five dimensions of European sovereignty

Sovereignty can be defined as the ability to freely decide one’s own destiny, to enforce one’s choices and to be recognised as legitimate in this role, whether at the level of a state or a larger entity — such as the European Union — when acting on behalf of its Member States. In this context, building European sovereignty means focusing on five dimensions.

1 — Defending ourselves without the United States

The first step is to take charge of the security and defence of the Union and the European continent and to build the Union’s strategic independence from the United States (in other words, to build the Union’s military sovereignty).

This poses several underlying challenges, such as the need to massively increase the Union’s defence capabilities, to equip it with strategic superiority capabilities, to build a common defence policy based on the complementarities of each member (efforts must be optimally distributed) and to adopt a new strategic culture. To paraphrase Louis Gautier, Director of the Chair in Contemporary Strategic Issues at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University, the Union needs good programmes and projects in order to spend wisely. Naturally, it is essential to give priority to the acquisition of European equipment in order to gradually build up a European preference. Finally, the creation of a common market for the defence industry, as recommended by Enrico Letta in his report Much More Than A Market (April 2024), would help to strengthen collective industrial defence capabilities within the EU by enabling economies of scale and reducing costly fragmentation and duplication. Antoine Bouvier, former CEO of European missile manufacturer MBDA, clearly explained in early April that we must finally decide whether we want to adopt a ‘best athlete’ approach or a ‘best team’ approach within the Union — the latter being one of true cooperation between partners.

Europeans must take a further step: that of building a solid and ambitious European sovereignty.

2 — Reducing our strategic dependencies

Building European sovereignty also means guaranteeing the Union’s sovereignty in terms of human security by reducing strategic dependencies, i.e. guaranteeing agricultural and food sovereignty, health sovereignty (first and foremost, securing supplies of critical medicines) and securing the Union’s water supply.

The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and the energy crisis in 2022 highlighted significant dependencies (in terms of masks, electronic components, gas, medicines, etc.) that weakened the Union’s ability to manage these crises and protect its citizens. Building on these difficult experiences, the EU must now focus on establishing and asserting its leadership in human security. This is essential to its attractiveness in a world of climate and geopolitical crises, and this attractiveness is a key factor in the future of the EU. Current demographic projections are indeed worrying: the gap between the growth of the working-age population in the Union and that in the United States is widening and, according to Eurostat projections, the population of the Union aged 75 and over will increase from 43.8 million in 2020 to 75.4 million in 2050. However, only a younger and more attractive European Union can establish itself as a human and economic power on the world stage. Furthermore, such demographic strengthening of Europe is essential to guarantee the future of its social protection and pension systems.

3 — Digital, technological and industrial sovereignty

Guaranteeing digital, technological and industrial sovereignty is the third pillar of building European sovereignty. This aspect of the Union’s sovereignty is essential to supporting its growth and competitiveness and therefore also constitutes a foundation for national social progress policies — and perhaps, in the future, for European social policy.

Several challenges underlie this: defining the Union’s industrial strategies to build a competitive European industrial policy; financing future investments towards carbon neutrality and digital transformation; regulating AI and digital platforms; reducing dependence on fossil fuels and ensuring energy autonomy; reducing dependence on supplies of critical metals; developing new supply and value chains, particularly in neighbouring countries with shared interests (in this sense, new relationships need to be built between the EU and African countries); and, finally, filtering investments and protecting strategic assets.

In other words, the EU must improve its competitiveness, increase its industrial production capacity, reduce its vulnerabilities and dependencies, and establish itself in the field of digital infrastructure and data design, manufacturing and operation. In terms of supplies, while China currently dominates nearly two-thirds of the global value chain for zero-carbon technologies, as well as virtually all the technologies and capacities for processing and refining the metals needed for this transition, some projections suggest that the EU’s imports of green materials and technologies could be reduced by €140 billion per year. Reducing these dependencies is also one of the ambitions of the European Critical Raw Materials Act.

If Europe does not have its own infrastructure in the future, it will be difficult — if not impossible — for it to enforce its values and standards.

Furthermore, in an increasingly digitalised world, the EU cannot afford to be dependent on GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) or BATX (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi) for its strategic technologies.

It has been a pioneer in protecting citizens by adopting the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018. But if Europe does not have its own infrastructure (cloud, software, networks) in the future, it will be difficult — if not impossible — for it to enforce its values and standards. Control over data is the lifeblood of economic sovereignty. The EU must urgently step up its efforts in terms of cloud services, the establishment of large data centres, the infrastructure, software and service layers of artificial intelligence models, etc.

4 — Being the leading continent in the ecological transition

Continuing to assume global leadership in driving the climate transition, i.e. asserting its environmental sovereignty, is the fourth pillar of building European sovereignty.

The challenges here are directly linked to the issues of asserting the Union’s technological and industrial sovereignty. The EU must continue the transition to a carbon-free economy and clean energy and build green industrial power. To this end, it must support investment in the circular economy, whose most successful models are often based on cutting-edge technological innovations and which contribute to reducing expenditure on raw material imports. Leading the climate transition is also directly linked to the protection of human health. The damage caused by climate change is indeed massive and fourfold: heat waves, deterioration in air quality, pressure on resources (particularly the availability of good-quality water and the risk of food insecurity), and the exacerbation of chronic diseases and the spread of infectious diseases.

5 — Defending democracy in the face of the return of authoritarian empires

Finally, the Union’s strategic autonomy must aim to protect and promote its democratic and social model, in other words its democratic sovereignty.

Building European sovereignty will not take away sovereignty from Member States: it will enable them to regain sovereignty in areas where they had, in fact, lost it.

A sovereign Europe will be better able to resist foreign interference — whether in the form of propaganda, disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks or digital interference campaigns, etc. — aimed at destabilising our societies and democratic processes. The more united and sovereign Europe is, the more it will be able to act as a driving force in the areas of human rights, global trade regulation, development cooperation and the fight against climate change. In doing so, it will also assert itself as a global model for its values and normative power.

A comprehensive strategy: reconciling sovereignty and mutual dependencies to defend democracy in Europe

In order to meet these five challenges, the Union must think strategically about its relationship with the rest of the world and quickly build the relationships that will flow from this strategic vision.

Donald Trump’s second term as President of the United States renders obsolete the logic of relative sovereignty of the Union defended by some Member States due to the blows dealt to Atlanticism (both as a community of values and as a community of destiny). In the ongoing redistribution of power on a global scale, the Union must assert itself unwaveringly as a power that imposes itself by itself and for itself at the table of the American, Chinese and Russian powers. This requires, on the one hand, defining its strategic interests and, on the other, adopting the necessary means to defend them.

Such adoption also requires, without delay, a strengthening of its relationship with the countries of the South, foremost among which are the countries of Africa — the Global Gateway strategy launched in 2022 is a first step in this direction. It is time for the European Union and its Member States to embrace a common geopolitical ambition.

The Union must think strategically about its relationship with the rest of the world and quickly build the relationships that will result from this strategic vision.

Why should the Member States of the Union strive to build this European sovereignty? The answer is simple: for EU Member States, European sovereignty could be a tool for regaining their strategic autonomy – and therefore their national sovereignty – in key sectors such as security (military and human), energy independence, critical supplies, etc. European sovereignty will strengthen national sovereignties, rather than the opposite, in a context where Europe must face the imperialist ambitions of the world’s major powers. It is most likely on the condition of European sovereignty that the EU will continue its integration and, above all, convince in the years and decades to come.

Let us remember one obvious fact: it is primarily the states that decide on European progress. Building European sovereignty requires Member States to accept ‘mutual dependencies’ in certain areas — to borrow the idea introduced by the 2013 French White Paper on defence and national security. This is particularly true in the area of military rearmament, where not only does no country in Europe have the means to build a completely autonomous defence, but also because we do not have to look far back in our history to understand the dramatic consequences of rearmament on the European continent. This is equally true in the areas of industrial policy and technological infrastructure. To paraphrase the 2013 White Paper, the aim is to organise discussions aimed at ‘replacing imposed dependencies with organised interdependencies, thereby reconciling sovereignty and mutual dependencies’ (which are mutually accepted).

In other words, building European sovereignty will not take away sovereignty from Member States: it will enable them to regain sovereignty in areas where they had, in fact, lost it. The history of the euro illustrates the dynamics that are likely to unfold. On paper, the euro deprived the states that adopted it of their monetary sovereignty, but in fact they had already been dispossessed of it in the 1990s by the deregulation of financial markets and speculative attacks on all European currencies, attacks that the introduction of the single currency helped to stop. The Greek crisis of the 2010s was extremely serious for the country and its inhabitants. But it also served as a stress test for the European Central Bank (ECB) and enabled the eurozone to reinvent itself. In July 2012, Mario Draghi, then head of the ECB, uttered the three words ‘Whatever it takes’, which saved the euro by putting an almost immediate end to market speculation. The post-2012 ECB created the European Stability Mechanism and the Single Resolution Fund, developed new tools, purchased government debt when necessary and, during the Covid-19 pandemic, circumvented its statutes to lend to governments.

Let us remember one obvious fact: it is primarily the states that decide on European progress.

Consequently, the decisive question that is now being asked of both the Union and its Member States is this: how much mutual dependence are you prepared to accept in order to guarantee the Union’s independence and build European power?

European citizens, for their part, currently express a very high level of confidence in the Union and its ability to defend Europe’s economic interests in the global economy. Measured by Eurobarometer 2024 at 51%, Europeans’ level of confidence in the EU has never been higher since 2007 — a figure that stands in stark contrast to the 33% confidence rating given to national governments. Support for the single currency has never been higher, either within the EU as a whole (74% of Europeans say they are in favour of the euro) or within the euro area (82% in favour). Finally, according to the results of Eurobarometer 2024, three out of four European citizens believe that the EU is more effective in defending the commercial interests of its Member States around the world than the Member States acting alone.

In March 2025, the major Eurobazooka survey commissioned by Le Grand Continent found that Europeans have more confidence in a common European army (60%) than in their national armies (19%) to ensure the security of their countries.

Now outside the EU, the UK has, paradoxically, perhaps never been so close to Europe.

At a time when US President Donald Trump is proclaiming that the EU was created to ‘rip off’ his country, European citizens are affirming their confidence in the EU to defend their continent. The boundaries of this massive public support for Europe even extend beyond the borders of the EU, as the British appear to be moving further and further away from American public opinion. The United Kingdom is a close ally of the Union, sharing a community of values and providing essential support in the rearmament of its sovereignty. Now outside the Union, the United Kingdom has, paradoxically, perhaps never been so close to Europe.

The rearmament of European sovereignty can be achieved at high speed and within a constant – or almost constant – institutional framework, provided that the EU continues to demonstrate pragmatism and to speed up its decision-making processes when necessary.

Envisioning European sovereignty is a democratic challenge.

European citizens are calling for it.

In the new world order, it is more important than ever for governments to rise to the occasion.