The polls carried out by the Clark Center’s various Expert Panels are always interesting, but they are rarely that surprising. Last week’s poll of the European Experts Panel was an exception. As Patrick Honohan of Trinity College Dublin put it, “I never thought it would come to this. But it has”.
The panel was asked whether “in a world in which most economic powers have programmes that give preference to their own strategic resources – for example, the Chinese have ‘Made in China’, and the Americans have ‘Buy American’ – the EU’s strategic independence would be substantially enhanced by establishing some form of European preference in public procurement in selected sectors”
A decade or so ago, one might have expected, perhaps with a high degree of uncertainty, the majority of respondents to disagree. After all, a “Buy European” programme – even for selected sectors – sounds a little like some form of protectionism. Something which economists generally argue against.
Last week, though, 17% of respondents – weighed by confidence – strongly agreed with the proposition and 37% agreed, 32% expressed uncertainty, and just 15% disagreed.
For European policymakers and economists, it seems, the world feels much more threatening than it did a decade or two ago. It is not just developments such as a rising fear of a second China shock playing into these concerns, but also rising US protectionism and the Trump administration’s threatening tone earlier this year on Greenland.
On one level, the results should perhaps not be a huge surprise. An earlier poll showed a striking level of support for a digital Euro, partially in order to safeguard European financial autonomy.
The panel was also asked whether “a ‘Buy European’ programme of public procurement in selected sectors could be implemented in a way that would deliver greater EU innovation and growth over the next five years than in the absence of such a programme”?
The results here were also supportive but less so. Again, weighed by confidence: 8% of respondents strongly agreed, 44% agreed, 23% were uncertain, 22% disagreed, and 3% strongly disagreed.
Taken together, the results suggest that the panel believe the case for a ‘buy European’ policy in some sectors relies more on the need to safeguard strategic independence than on any potential boost to growth.
The comments left by respondents do not point only to a range of views about which – if any – sectors should be subject to a buy European requirement, but also point, in many ways, to a lack of enthusiasm about the idea in the first place. As Jean-Pierre Danthine of the Paris School of Economics put it, he supports the idea but “with a lot of hesitancy”. His colleague Agnès Bénassy-Quéré argued that “economic efficiency is no longer the only criterion. Europe must build resilience for key inputs” but noted that “the latter must be defined narrowly, though”.
As Franklin Allen of Imperial College London stated, “this makes a lot of sense in the defence industry and other related industries. But in many of the remaining industries competition, often foreign competition, is an important driver of minimising costs and improving welfare”.
A range of sectors were mentioned where some form of buy European programme could be required, from defence to communications to financial infrastructure to space. One imagines that agreement levels on the panel would narrow as proposals became more specific,
As Olivier Blanchard of the Peterson Institute said, “the case is strong on paper, dangerous in practice”.
And of course, many respondents stuck to the traditional argument against any such selective spending. As Ricardo Reis of the London School of Economics put it, “in an idealized work with a “benevolent social planner”, agree. But with lobbying and capture by powerful industries, then uncertain. I would have to see the details of how it is done”. Or as John Vickers of Oxford argued, “inefficient procurement is costly. Resilience of supply is part of efficiency in some sectors but “European preference” is poorly targeted on that”.
This policy direction is materializing through the introduction of “European sovereignty” requirements across both public procurement and public funding frameworks and is backed by the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) recent case law considerably limiting the rights of non-EU bidders in public procurement procedures.
This shift is especially pronounced in sectors deemed critical to national and regional security — namely, defense and security, information technology, and healthcare. In these areas, the EU has recently introduced impactful policy instruments designed to promote the development and procurement of domestically produced technologies and capabilities. These measures underscore the EU’s deepening commitment to technological sovereignty and the long-term competitiveness of its industrial base. In parallel, developments in member states — for example, the new German draft bill regarding defense procurement — indicate that the “European sovereignty” requirements are poised to be introduced into national laws as well.
A more strategically independent European Union will perhaps be one that starts to cut foreign interests out of some sectors of its economy. The real battle will be fought over exactly which sectors those are.
