EU officials are scouring the continent for levers they can pull to inflict maximum pain on others, as they look to survive in a world in which allies and partners are weaponising Europe’s own dependencies at an alarming rate.
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Trade bureaucrats are building a database of potential chokepoints that can be squeezed as deterrents or reactions to bullying by other powers, according to officials involved.
They are lining them up with the trade weapons in their armoury, but also looking for gaps in the EU’s arsenal that could be developed to tool the bloc up for this era of rampant economic warfare.
“We have dependencies that others weaponise but others are also dependent on us,” Sabine Weyand, the EU’s top trade official, said in the European Parliament last week.
“How can we move from a reactive attitude to a proactive attitude, one where we are not just trying to protect ourselves against weaknesses, but where we are also leveraging our strength?”
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Work on the “economic security doctrine” comes as the world of rigid rules upon which the European Union was built crumbles.
The bloc finds itself squeezed ever tighter by US President Donald Trump’s coercive use of trade tariffs and China’s chokehold on critical raw materials, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens to spread to a broader European land war.