Economic interdependence was long presented as a guarantee of peace. It has become a weapon. Washington demonstrated this: in 2019, cutting Huawei off from American chips. Then forbidding TSMC from delivering certain processors to China. The United States showed that a dominant position in a global network transforms into an instrument of pressure at nearly zero cost.

In October 2025, Beijing activated the same mechanism, restricting exports of rare earths and battery components to its competitors [11]. Europe watches, endures, and still searches for how to respond. The decision that 2027 must make is institutional: transfer to the European scale the competence to protect and activate the economic levers that Europe already possesses, but does not coordinate.

A Dependency Built Over Thirty Years of Free Trade Without Vigilance

The trajectory is long. Since the 1990s, the European economy, and even more so the French economy, has outsourced entire sections of its industrial production to Asia. This choice was rational in the narrowest sense: prices fell, specialization increased. But it left gaping vulnerabilities on the most strategic segments.

Today, the European Union consumes approximately 20% of global semiconductor production but manufactures only 9% [1]. For critical minerals, the situation is more serious. China is the dominant refiner for 19 of the 20 strategic minerals analyzed by the International Energy Agency, with an average market share of 70% [2]. Between 2020 and 2024, the share of the three leading refining countries rose from 82% to 86% globally on average [2]. Investment in diversification capacity has slowed: 5% growth in 2024, versus 14% in 2023 [3].

For rare earths specifically, 46% of European imports came from China in 2024 [4]. France has no mining concessions assigned to a European company exploiting rare earths [4]. It imports 90% of its semiconductors in finished product form. In 2022, this bill reached 7 billion euros, against national production of 5 billion [5].

The European Court of Auditors is explicit: despite the regulation on critical raw materials adopted in April 2024, the European Union “will struggle to secure, by the end of the decade, supplies of strategic raw materials” [6]. Demand for rare earth metals for wind turbines must multiply by 4.5 by 2030, that for lithium by eleven [7]. The ecological and digital transition thus aggravates dependency at the very moment when the dominant supplier learns to use it as leverage.

Dependency Becomes Weapon: What 2025 Revealed

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman theorized as early as 2019 what they call “weaponized interdependence”: states that control the central nodes of global economic networks can use them to exercise coercion on those who depend on them [8]. Edward Fishman, in Chokepoints (2025), documents how the United States systematized this logic (dollar, chips, sanctions) over twenty years [9].

The turning point in 2025 is that the two great powers activated their levers simultaneously, in divergent directions, and Europe found itself in both crosshairs. Washington imposed tariffs on European imports, then partially withdrew them as part of a commercial agreement in July 2025 [10]. Beijing restricted in October 2025 its exports of rare earths, then battery components to an extended range of applications [11]. These two moves exploit vulnerabilities that Europe spent three decades constructing.

Europe nevertheless possesses a major lever of its own. ASML, based in Veldhoven in the Netherlands, produces 100% of extreme ultraviolet lithography machines and 94% of lithography machines in general [12]. These are the equipment that manufactures all advanced chips on the planet. This monopoly results from more than thirty years of research and development, for cumulative investment exceeding 9 billion euros [12].

Since 2019, under American pressure, the Netherlands has progressively restricted exports of these machines to China. These controls were decided bilaterally with Washington, without a framework of coordinated European economic sovereignty. The Commission has no mandate to pilot this industrial policy [13].

Bruegel states this clearly in a 2025 analysis: Europe does not control chip manufacturing, but it holds with ASML a monopoly on the machines that serve to manufacture them. It therefore cannot be easily excluded from global semiconductor value chains, provided it knows how to defend this advantage [14]. The issue is not total industrial reconquest. It is to map and protect the positions that Europe already holds, and to identify those it can still build.

Five Billion Disbursed, No Results Required

France mobilized 8.7 billion euros for its microelectronics sector between 2018 and 2025. Five billion have already been disbursed, mainly through France 2030 and Bpifrance [15]. The Court of Auditors’ verdict, in its April 2026 report, is severe.

No overall consolidation has ever been accomplished to this day [15]. The state has no consolidated vision of the aid distributed by local governments and the European Union. No performance obligation was imposed on industrialists [15]. The Court concludes that neither the European Chips Act nor national strategies will, as currently constituted, suffice to close Europe’s technological gap with Asian and American powers [16].

France represents 11% of European semiconductor production, with recognized companies like STMicroelectronics [17]. Its dependency on imports has nevertheless worsened since the 2000s in the most advanced stages. Subsidies were disbursed; strategy is lacking. The decision architecture is the problem, not the amount spent.

At the European level, the picture is identical on a larger scale. The Commission published an economic security doctrine on December 3, 2025 [18]. It maps risks, identifies six priority areas, and calls for more coordination.

Bruegel notes, in its analysis of this doctrine, that it focuses on medium-term industrial dependencies while almost entirely ignoring financial and digital dependencies [19]. The American cloud, payment systems, data services pose immediate and high risks. The European anti-coercion instrument, meant to respond to pressure from Beijing or Washington, was not activated in 2025 despite apparently met conditions [20]. Its credibility erodes from lack of use.

Transfer Competence to the Scale Where Levers Actually Exist

Critical dependencies are measured firm by firm, node by node, and not in aggregated flows between countries. Isabelle Méjean, whose work focuses on business trade networks, has documented this for several years [21]. We do not yet know which products are truly critical to the European economy. Data exist partially at the Commission, but analytical capacity remains insufficient for real-time steering [22]. You cannot defend a lever you have not mapped.

The national approach, state by state, precisely circumvents the logic of coercion levers. France spent 8.7 billion without a clear strategy [15]. Germany invests heavily in its own champions. The Netherlands defends ASML under American pressure, without European coordination [23]. A Dutch company exposed to American pressure is not protected by a French strategy.

The break is institutional. It consists of transferring to the European level the competence to map, protect and use the levers that Europe possesses, with an enforceable right to a common response in case of economic coercion. This requires three concrete shifts.

The first: equip the European Union with an economic intelligence agency with access to granular data on supply chains. The Commission’s Joint Research Centre has begun deploying tools to this end, without decision-making power [22]. An advisory committee is not enough.

The second: transform the anti-coercion instrument into a triggering mechanism with predefined thresholds and responses. Its credibility cannot depend on the political courage of the moment [20].

The third: unify export controls on critical European technologies, including ASML machines, at the Union scale, and no longer state member by state member under American pressure [23].

After this transfer, the decision to protect or activate a European lever no longer belongs to twenty-seven separate governments negotiating with Washington or Beijing in their own corners. It belongs to an institution with a mandate, information and response capacity at the scale where economic networks actually function.

In December 2025, Bruegel formalized this logic: the European Union must combine a medium-term strategy to reduce its dependencies with a short-term capacity to react to threats of coercion. This requires that supply chain levers be first identified [24]. Fishman documented how the United States built its arsenal over thirty years, with a coherent doctrine, not measure by measure [9]. Europe, with ASML, with the euro, with certain refining expertise, possesses real assets. It has simply not yet decided to hold them together.

Sources

[1] CEPA, « Chips War 2025 », Center for European Policy Analysis, February 2025, https://cepa.org/commentary/part-five-chips-war-2025/ (accessed 18/09/2026).

[2] IEA, Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025, International Energy Agency, May 2025, https://www.iea.org/reports/global-critical-minerals-outlook-2025/executive-summary (accessed 18/09/2026).

[3] IEA, « Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025: Overview of outlook for key minerals », International Energy Agency, May 2025, http://www.iaonr.org/archives/3594 (accessed 18/09/2026).

[4] Senate, « Current Affairs Note on European Policy Regarding Rare Earths », European Affairs Commission, October 15, 2025, https://www.senat.fr/fileadmin/cru-1762483659/Commissions/Affaires_europeennes/Fichiers/Avis_politiques/Actualites_europeenne_n_69_terres_rares.pdf (accessed 18/09/2026).

[5] Directorate General for Enterprises (DGE), « Semiconductors: a globalized market and European dependency », Thema no. 27, January 2025, https://www.entreprises.gouv.fr/la-dge/publications/les-semi-conducteurs-un-marche-mondialise-et-une-dependance-europeenne (accessed 18/09/2026).

[6] European Court of Auditors, report on EU dependency on critical raw materials imports, cited in Touteleurope.eu, February 2, 2026, https://www.touteleurope.eu/environnement/la-cour-des-comptes-europeenne-alerte-sur-la-dependance-de-l-ue-aux-importations-de-matieres-premieres-critiques/ (accessed 18/09/2026).

[7] European Commission, proposal for regulation on critical raw materials, cited in Euractiv, March 2023, https://www.euractiv.fr/section/economie/news/decryptage-lue-devoile-son-plan-contre-la-dependance-aux-matieres-premieres-critiques-chinoises/ (accessed 18/09/2026).

[8] Farrell, Henry and Newman, Abraham L., « Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion », International Security, vol. 44, no. 1, 2019, p. 42-79, https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/44/1/42/12237/Weaponized-Interdependence-How-Global-Economic (accessed 18/09/2026).

[9] Fishman, Edward, Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare, Portfolio/Penguin Random House, 2025, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/726149/chokepoints-by-edward-fishman/ (accessed 18/09/2026).

[10] European Parliament, « The transformation of the EU’s economic model 2016-2026 », EPRS Briefing 783766, 2026, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2026/783766/EPRS_BRI(2026)783766_EN.pdf (accessed 18/09/2026).

[11] IEA, « With new export controls on critical minerals, supply concentration risks become reality », October 23, 2025, https://www.iea.org/commentaries/with-new-export-controls-on-critical-minerals-supply-concentration-risks-become-reality (accessed 18/09/2026).

[12] Foreign Affairs Forum, « The Silicon Chokepoint: ASML, China, and the Geopolitics of the World’s Most Important Machine », July 6, 2026, https://www.faf.ae/home/2026/7/6/the-silicon-chokepoint-asml-china-and-the-geopolitics-of-the-worlds-most-important-machine (accessed 18/09/2026).

[13] Bruegel, « Revamping Europe’s chips strategy: indispensability, not self-sufficiency », 2025, https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/revamping-europes-chips-strategy-indispensability-not-self-sufficiency (accessed 18/09/2026).

[14] Bruegel, « Revamping Europe’s chips strategy: indispensability, not self-sufficiency », 2025, https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/revamping-europes-chips-strategy-indispensability-not-self-sufficiency (accessed 18/09/2026).

[15] Court of Auditors, Support for the Semiconductor Sector, report of April 21, 2026, https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/2026-04/20260421-Soutien-filiere-des-semi-conducteurs.pdf (accessed 18/09/2026).

[16] Theatrum Belli, « Semiconductor Sector: Court of Auditors Report », summary of the aforementioned report, https://theatrum-belli.com/filiere-des-semi-conducteurs-rapport-de-la-cour-des-comptes/ (accessed 18/09/2026).

[17] DGE, Thema 27: Semiconductors, January 2025; Clubic, summary of the Court of Auditors report, April 2026, https://www.clubic.com/actualite-609868-semi-conducteurs-la-france-a-depense-8-7-milliards-d-euros-en-sept-ans-mais-sait-elle-vraiment-ou-elle-va.html (accessed 18/09/2026).

[18] European Commission, « Joint Communication on Strengthening EU Economic Security », December 3, 2025; CSIS, « Unveiling the European Union’s Major Economic Security Update », February 2026, https://www.csis.org/analysis/unveiling-european-unions-major-economic-security-update-true-geopolitical-commission (accessed 18/09/2026).

[19] IEP Bocconi, « What the EU’s Updated Economic Security Doctrine Still Lacks », December 2025, https://iep.unibocconi.eu/what-eus-updated-economic-security-doctrine-still-lacks (accessed 18/09/2026).

[20] European Policy Centre, « From firefighting to strategy: The EU’s Economic Security Doctrine », December 2025, https://www.epc.eu/publication/from-firefighting-to-strategy-the-eus-economic-security-doctrine/ (accessed 18/09/2026).

[21] Méjean, Isabelle, interview « Tout relocaliser n’est pas possible », Oeconomicus, 2023; ERC research « Firm-to-Firm Trade Networks », Sciences Po, https://oeconomicus.fr/tout-relocaliser-nest-pas-possible-conversation-avec-isabelle-mejean/ (accessed 18/09/2026).

[22] Bruegel, García-Bercero, I. and Poitiers, N., « From strategy to doctrine: the next steps for European economic security », Policy Brief 32/2025, December 2025; European Commission, Joint Research Centre, economic indicators of trade dependencies, 2024, https://www.bruegel.org/policy-brief/strategy-doctrine-next-steps-european-economic-security (accessed 18/09/2026).

[23] AI Policy Bulletin, « Dutch Export Controls Don’t Go Far Enough on China », April 2026, https://www.aipolicybulletin.org/articles/dutch-export-controls-dont-go-far-enough-on-china (accessed 18/09/2026).

[24] Bruegel, García-Bercero, I. and Poitiers, N., « From strategy to doctrine: the next steps for European economic security », Policy Brief 32/2025, December 2025, https://www.bruegel.org/policy-brief/strategy-doctrine-next-steps-european-economic-security (accessed 18/09/2026).