According to the OECD, the number of foreign investment control mechanisms in OECD economies has more than doubled in the last ten years, while export restrictions on industrial raw materials have increased more than fivefold since 2009. At the same time, global foreign direct investment (FDI) flows have fallen from nearly 4% of global GDP in the early 2000s to just 1.4% in 2025.

These trends reflect a new reality: governments now view investments, supply chains, critical raw materials and strategic technologies as matters of power and national security.

It is in this context that the European Union is seeking to define its own economic security doctrine, attempting to reconcile reducing its strategic vulnerabilities with maintaining its economic openness.

From Theory to Action

While the European Economic Security Strategy presented in 2023 laid the foundations, recent months have seen a notable acceleration.

With the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) proposed in March 2026, the European Commission is embracing a more interventionist approach. The text aims to accelerate investment in strategic sectors and paves the way for more systematic use of criteria favouring European technologies and products in certain public procurement.

For its proponents, it is an indispensable instrument in the face of aggressive industrial policies from the United States and China. For its critics, the risk is fuelling a logic of national preference incompatible with the economic openness that the EU continues to defend on the international stage.

In parallel, the EU continues to deploy its economic security toolbox. The European mechanism for screening foreign investments is being progressively strengthened, while the Commission encourages Member States to better coordinate their approaches to investment screening and the protection of sensitive technologies. Work also continues on outbound investments, dual-use technologies and strategic dependencies in critical sectors.

These developments reveal the strategic adjustment of European priorities. Long focused on market opening and trade negotiations, the Directorate-General for Trade thus became the Directorate-General for Trade and Economic Security at the end of 2024. This semantic shift reflects the growing importance of resilience, strategic dependencies and geoeconomic competition at the heart of the EU’s external action.

A Global Trend

The EU is not alone in taking this path, however.

In the United States, economic security has been a central pillar of industrial policy since the first Trump Administration in 2016.

The most recent example is the America First Investment Policy implemented in February 2025, which provides for strengthened control of inbound and outbound investments in sensitive technology sectors, particularly vis-à-vis China. This initiative is part of a broader strategy aimed at preserving national technological advantages while reducing the risks of external dependence.

China, for its part, has adopted a new regulation (Decree No. 837) on outbound investments that strengthens control over the transfer of capital, data and technologies abroad, particularly in sectors related to artificial intelligence. This initiative is part of a broader strategy aimed at preserving national technological advantages while reducing the risks of external dependence.

Japan has also established itself as one of the pioneers of economic security. Its Economic Security Promotion Act, implemented since 2022, rests on four pillars: securing supply chains, protecting critical infrastructure, supporting strategic technologies and protecting sensitive innovations. Long perceived as a matter of trade or industrial policy, economic security is now fully integrated into Japan’s national strategy.

The European Challenge

The real question is therefore no longer whether the EU must act, but how.

Europe is seeking to strike a balance by avoiding two pitfalls.

On the one hand, inaction would risk allowing excessive dependencies to persist in critical sectors such as semiconductors, strategic raw materials or artificial intelligence.

On the other hand, an overly interventionist approach could weaken the attractiveness of the European market, discourage investment and contribute to increased fragmentation of the global economy.

The recent conclusion of several trade agreements aimed at diversifying supply chains and export markets for European countries (EU-Mercosur agreement, EU-India agreement, etc.) is one counterpart of the European strategy for its economic security.

Nevertheless, debates remain intense among the 27 Member States on calibrating measures focused on the “protection” of the European economy.

This balance will nonetheless need to be decisive and enshrined to ensure, in the years to come, the credibility of the European model in the face of the highly interventionist approaches of the United States and China.