by Gaspard BENSA
In March 2022, the European Union adopted its Strategic Compass for Security and Defense, a comprehensive framework designed to strengthen the Union’s ability to act independently, protect its interests, and reduce external dependencies in both economic and security matters. As Josep Borrell, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, observed at the time, “the idea of power is new to Europe,” with this being crucial today because of China’s weaponization of critical raw materials to exploit European vulnerabilities.
While the Strategic Compass has attracted attention for its ambitious goals related to defense cooperation, external dependencies and crisis preparedness, it reflects a deeper challenge facing the EU: how to achieve a reliable framework for enhancing economic and security autonomy. According to analysis by Fiott, the framework addresses three central dimensions: reducing structural dependencies that create economic vulnerabilities, improving the EU’s capacity to defend its territory and strategic interests, and shaping Europe’s global posture toward emerging systemic challenges, particularly those posed by China.
Yet the central question remains unresolved: caught between Chinese economic coercion and American security guarantees, can Europe navigate an independent course in an international environment that has become “more contested, less predictable, and increasingly shaped by power politics“?
Reducing dependencies that create economic and security vulnerabilities
The Strategic Compass (2022) aims to reduce the EU’s structural dependencies that expose it to economic pressure and supply-chain vulnerabilities. While the 2024 Progress Report on Implementation acknowledges advances in identifying critical dependencies across raw materials, semiconductors, and emerging technologies, the extent of material progress remains contested. The European Commission projects that because of the Strategic Compass, the remanufacturing market will expand “from €31 billion to €100 billion by 2030,” generating tens of thousands of new jobs. Beyond industrial policy, defense spending has surged by 49.5%, from €218 billion in 2021 to €326 billion in 2024, signaling renewed commitment to strategic autonomy following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
An example of this new strategy at the national level is France’s Rafale, which exemplifies this trajectory. Dassault Aviation secured 507 total orders by late 2024, with 273 designated for export markets and major contracts from the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and India. These achievements positioned France to become the world’s second-largest arms exporter, demonstrating that the Strategic Compass can foster credible European defense industries capable of competing with external suppliers.
Nevertheless, persistent vulnerabilities reveal the limits of these advances. The 2024 Progress Report concedes that “several supply chains remain highly vulnerable to external pressure“. Of 34 critical raw materials identified in 2023, eight exceed the 65% single-country concentration threshold, with China accounting for most of these cases. Academic assessments suggest that the Strategic Compass has yet to deliver instruments sufficient to materially reduce dependencies. Further, Knezović and Duić observe that despite advances in diversification policies and strategic stockpiles, fragmentation among member states continues to undermine strategic coherence. Consequently, while the EU has strengthened its diagnostic capacity, but its ability to meaningfully diminish dependencies by 2025 remains constrained by systemic obstacles and uneven political commitment among member states.
Improving Europe’s ability to defend and safeguard its strategic interests
The Strategic Compass’s second pillar emphasizes strengthening the European Union’s ability to defend its territory and safeguard its strategic interests through enhanced military capacities. The EU’s principal achievement is the Rapid Deployment Capacity (RDC), which became fully operational in 2025, and it can deploy “up to 5,000 troops” across “land, air, maritime, space, and cyber components” for various crisis scenarios. This operational readiness was validated through successive live exercises named EUBG (EU Battlegroup) and MILEX in Spain, Germany, and Hungary, and these exercises demonstrated the EU’s growing capacity as a security provider. General Robert Brieger emphasizes that maintaining unity among member states through effective communication and politics alignment is essential for sustaining these defense efforts as war fatigue intensifies with prolonged conflict. Beyond infrastructure, the EU has translated these capabilities into concrete action, training over 80,000 Ukrainian military personnel since 2022, making it one of the largest providers of military training to Ukraine.
However, critical constraints undermine these advances. The RDC’s deployment requires unanimous decision-making, perpetuating the paralysis that prevented EU Battlegroups from being used between 2007 and 2022. Knezović and Duić question whether the Strategic Compass represents “anything new for the EU’s CSDP,” as structural obstacles remain unaddressed, such as insufficient parliamentary oversight mechanisms for PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation) and EDF (European Defense Fund), and unclear legal frameworks for joint defense acquisition. Moreover, since the RDC lacks autonomous capabilities, it relies on United States provided strategic capacities including airlift, intelligence, and reconnaissance. In the end, while the EU has improved its operational architecture, genuine autonomous action remains constrained by structural dependencies, unanimous decision-making, and divergent national priorities .
Adapting the EU’s global posture toward emerging systemic challenges from China
A third major objective of the Strategic Compass is strengthening the EU’s global posture as it navigates systemic challenges, particularly those posed by China. Europe’s vulnerability became evident when China tightened its grip on rare earth exports, as the European Commission revealed that Europe “rely on one single supplier – China – for 98% of our rare earth supply, 93% of our magnesium supply and 97% of our lithium – just to name a few” at the time of the Strategic Compass’s adoption in 2022. China imposed export restrictions on gallium and germanium in 2023, and since it is the EU’s primary supplier of these strategic materials, gallium prices in Europe nearly doubled, demonstrating Beijing’s capacity to weaponize economic dependencies. The EU continues to rely on China for over 90% of its rare earth supply, with experts warning that meaningful reduction could take three to four years.
In response, the Strategic Compass emphasizes resilience and diversification. The Critical Raw Materials Act (2024) established ambitious 2030 targets: “10% local extraction, 40% to be processed in the EU and 25% to emanate from recycled materials,” while capping reliance on any single non-EU country to 65% for each critical mineral. However, internal divisions among member states driven by their individual needs regarding raw materials undermine unified European strategy on China. While the Compass outlines a more assertive global posture, implementation remains restricted by political fragmentation, competing national interests, and the challenge of balancing economic interdependence with strategic autonomy in the context of intensifying US-China rivalry.
Conclusion
Despite a 49.5% increase in defense spending and the 2025 launch of the EU Rapid Deployment Capacity, these achievements mask deeper structural failures. This analysis demonstrates that the Strategic Compass has achieved partial but incomplete success in enhancing European autonomy and strategic awareness. Ultimately, Europe finds itself trapped between competing dependencies that undermine autonomy. China has weaponized its dominance over critical raw materials, while simultaneously the United States maintains decisive influence over European security through NATO and the provision of strategic capabilities essential for EU military operations. The Strategic Compass treats surface-level symptoms (budgets, equipment, personnel) while it ignores deeper systemic failures that determine Europe’s ability to act. An overview of the evidence reveals that the true obstacles to European power lie not in insufficient resources but in the dysfunctional nature of EU decision-making institutions and the absence of genuine European unity.
