{"id":791517,"date":"2026-02-27T01:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T01:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/791517\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T01:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T01:56:12","slug":"opinion-europe-is-ready-for-strategic-autonomy-but-at-what-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/791517\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Europe is ready for strategic autonomy, but at what cost?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This year\u2019s Munich Security Conference<\/a> arrived as less of a shock to Europeans, who have largely accepted that the good old days are gone for good. A few might still have got teary-eyed when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described America as eternally \u201cthe child of Europe<\/a>\u201d, but most in the audience understood the underlying message: \u201cYou are on your own now, Granny.\u201dThe difference between Rubio\u2019s more measured phrasing and Vice-President J.D. Vance\u2019s blunt remarks<\/a> last year is largely a matter of syntax. \u201cNobody doubts the good old days are over and we need to look after ourselves. Rubio and Vance are, in fact, saying the same thing,\u201d one European diplomat observed.<\/p>\n

Officials, experts and academics I\u2019ve spoken with during my recent visits to Munich, Berlin and Brussels agree on two imperatives: Europe must urgently regain its competitiveness and achieve strategic autonomy. The consensus holds that Europe now lags behind the United States and China, particularly in technology and advanced manufacturing. Without reclaiming its competitive edge, the continent will enter major-power negotiations from a position of weakness.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake: the EU still excels in basic research and innovation, but it remains painfully slow to translate breakthroughs into market-ready products.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem stems from well-documented overregulation<\/a>. For instance, it would cost a small or medium-sized business \u20ac200,000 to \u20ac500,000 (US$235,000 to US$590,600) just to go through the compliance process required by the EU AI Act<\/a> to deploy an AI system considered \u201chigh risk\u201d.<\/p>\n

Market fragmentation compounds the challenge: legal frameworks, tax regimes and business practices vary significantly across the 27 member states, hindering European tech firms from scaling as rapidly as their American and Chinese counterparts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year\u2019s Munich Security Conference arrived as less of a shock to Europeans, who have largely accepted that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[6207,2574,11330,1395,14787,32,2000,299,5187,1699,36,1824,2199,16760,2821,770,332,49],"class_list":["post-791517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-america","tag-berlin","tag-brussels","tag-china","tag-cold-war","tag-donald-trump","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-italy","tag-munich","tag-nato","tag-poland","tag-russia","tag-united-states"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116140112878830501","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}