The EU’s Open Strategic Autonomy and the challenge of competitiveness in the era of geo-politicized interdependence

A long-time champion of economic openness, the European Union has adapted to an increasingly geopoliticized world, reorienting its support for multilateral liberalization towards greater self-reliance. Brussels’ Open Strategic Autonomy policy concept (OSA) has guided the redefinition of the EU’s trade policy in the 2020s, embodying Brussels’s middle-of-the-road approach to achieving economic security and fostering technological sovereignty. This chapter unpacks the EU’s renewed commitment to multilateralism through the OSA policy concept, and its enhancement via the competitiveness discourse. While the EU “pendulum” has now oscillated towards autonomy, and away from openness, Brussels has in truth embarked on a path of “reluctant geopoliticization” (Herranz-Surallés et al. 2024). Except for select measures, the chapter argues, OSA mercantilism remains primarily reactive and defensive, with the Union’s calls to competitiveness serving as a rhetorical bridge to cement the consensus between its liberalizing and autonomist “souls”. Second, the chapter contends that the timing and shape of this change has been premised on the convergence of three main components: a Franco-German consensus (1); a compromise between the European Commission’s Directorate Generals (DGs) most pro-autonomy (DG GROW, DG CNECT, DG DIGIT) and the most hands-off, market-oriented DGs (DG TRADE, DG COMP, DG ECFIN) (2); and widespread support from citizens and the private sector (3). The chapter concludes by examining the potential of the “OSA-cum-Competitiveness EU model” to navigate the challenges of geopoliticized interdependence