The geopolitics of supply chains: EU efforts to ensure security of supply

Abstract

Recently, the EU launched a number of initiatives to prevent the weaponising of supply chains and build resilience against interruptions. This article explores attempts to ensure security of supply in three sectors: semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and critical raw materials. The analysis contrasts the measures taken in each sector in order to highlight commonalities and explain differences in approach and impact. This comparison of the EU's three principal policies for mitigating supply chain disruption shows the EU has equipped itself with more policy tools in the area of critical raw materials. The argument put forward to explain this prioritisation is that the weaponisation of critical raw materials has already taken place and risks stoking a political backlash against the EU green deal. Consequently, the evidence shows how the EU's geoeconomic hedging marks a move away from an overriding commitment to free markets as part of the postwar liberal international order. Rather, the EU is experimenting with market-directing mechanisms involving state aid, stockpiling and regulatory interventions in the name of security of supply. This change illustrates not just the fraying of the liberal international trade order but also the part that the EU is playing in this transformation.