At the foundations of European strategic autonomy lie energy, water, critical minerals — and the ability to regenerate them.
The world has shifted. Not all at once, but with the inexorable force of tectonic plates grinding beneath the surface. For three decades - since the fall of the Berlin wall - Europe lived under the illusion of perpetual peace. We believed rules would replace force, that law would govern relations between nations, that commercial interdependence would shield us from war. Lulled by these convictions, we basked in the dividends of peace without a care for tomorrow.
But this wishful thinking was shattered by cold reality. The cracks below the surface became impossible to ignore. A global pandemic paralyzed our economies and exposed the fragility of our supply chains. As we were trying to reboot our economies and our lives, wars erupted. Energy shocks followed, exacerbating the same vulnerabilities day after day after day. Words we thought consigned to the history books – scarcity, shortage, inflation – made their way back into the public conversation and our daily life.
And with them came a truth we could no longer ignore: resources are never neutral. They can stabilize or undermine a nation. They can create prosperity or become instruments of coercion. What we believed was our greatest source of our stability - unlimited access to global resources - turned out to be our greatest vulnerability. And now that we know the cost, we cannot afford to ignore it.
From Interdependence to Hyper-Dependence: The Cost of Strategic Debt
Europe built its prosperity on a simple bet: unlimited access to the resources our entire economy depends on. We fragmented our supply chains across the globe, convinced that maximum optimization was the be-all and end-all. We believed that economic ties would protect us from war. Instead, we found ourselves trapped in a position of hyperdependency that leaves us exposed to geopolitical and climate shocks.
We forgot something essential: the ability to function when flows stop. In military terms, we speak of strategic depth - the capacity to endure disruption.
Energy is the starkest illustration. Europe currently imports 58% of its energy, up from 44% just thirty years ago. And we’ve deepened this vulnerability by replacing one dependency with another: after cutting back on imports of Russian gas, we rushed toward American liquefied natural gas, with imports surging 60% in a single a year. Meanwhile the United States dominates oil and gas markets, while China has established itself as the undisputed leader in the energy transition technologies that will shape tomorrow’s energy landscape. Europe,caught between them, falls further behind.
Another dependency promises to be even more decisive. Critical minerals and rare-earth elements are the lifeblood of our strategic industries: electric vehicles, wind turbines, data centers,defense systems. It takes six times the amount of minerals to manufacture an electric car than its internal combustion equivalent. Yet European soil is profoundly depleted of these resources. While we debate electrification, China has already locked in access to these resources. It controls 60 to 70% of global rare earth extraction - but crucially, 80 to 90% of refining. Europe produces barely 1% of the lithium it needs and less than 10% of the copper. We are 98% dependent.
The vicious cycle is clear: as climate change intensifies scarcity and degrades resource quality, our access to reliable, affordable resources becomes more fragile. Estelle Brachlianoff, CEO of Veolia.
However, there is a dependency even more critical that underpins all the others: water. Climate breakdown has brought chaos to hydrological cycles, with flooding in winter and droughts as early as the spring. Water quality is subject to the same chaos. Pollution is intensifying. Freshwater resources are increasingly compromised. By 2050, water demand will rise 50%. This scarcity breeds escalating conflict - first between nations. India and Pakistan are already fighting over water. But also between different sectors of the economy. Agriculture accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption. Industry, data centers, nuclear power plants all constantly demand greater volumes of water. When water runs short, usage conflicts explode. Half of humanity will face water shortages, with direct impacts on public health. In water-stressed regions, GDP will fall by 6%.
The vicious cycle is clear: as climate change intensifies scarcity and degrades resource quality, our access to reliable, affordable resources becomes more fragile. Scarcity reinforces geopolitical vulnerability, which traps us deeper in the cycle.
The awakening came slowly, progressively. We have started to see the direct consequences as the crack has widened. Between 2021 and 2023, energy prices shot up 150%. Food prices climbed 40%. European households saw their spending power fall 3% on average. This was imported inflation - a shock from outside.
The situation not only impacts our bank accounts; our industrial capacity has also taken a hit. The European car industry is an especially glaring example. We invented the electric car and built the technologies. But we lost the battery battle. While our manufacturers fought each other in a fragmented marketplace, China unified its market and gave massive backing to BYD. Jobs have been lost. Our competitiveness has been undermined. But all of this – inflation, factory closures, loss of competitiveness – was simply the tip of the iceberg. Beneath lay a deeper reality: our entire system was fragile by design.
The war in Ukraine was the real wake-up call. European nations woke up to what it truly means to depend on resources you no longer control. For years we imported Russian gas without question.Then suddenly, that dependency became vulnerability. A weapon used against us. This forced a paradigm shift. We could no longer think about security the way we had before.
And the conflicts ravaging the Middle East are a daily reminder that we still suffer the consequences even when we are not directly involved. Oil prices have skyrocketed. Supply chains are at a halt. Our economies are teetering. Behind these complex wars lies a struggle for control of resources. And because we are dependent on those self-same resources, we have become hostages. We are paying the price, economically, socially, politically. This is the implacable logic of dependency: it makes us vulnerable to crises not of our creation.
Environmental Security: Investing in Our Geopolitical Rearmament
There is a strategy for escaping the trap we find ourselves in.
A strategy based on taking back control. Of mastering the resources we depend on. Of ensuring that the energy powering our factories comes from our soil. That the minerals used by our industries are extracted here. That the water irrigating our fields will continue to flow.
Because all these resources – water, energy, raw materials – are the invisible foundations of our world. For too long, we treated them as commodities, costs to manage. But now reality has caught up with us. These foundations are shaking. And this realization forces us into a new era. An era where resource security is no longer an environmental issue in the activist sense. It is a systemic imperative. The capacity to lock in long-term access to the resources we need. This is what I call environmental security.
This is no longer a matter of choice, it is a strategic necessity. Ensuring environmental security is an act of geopolitical rearmament. It is about reconquering our sovereignty. It is the condition of our future power. Embedding this imperative at the heart of Europe’s geostrategic doctrine would give it control over the critical needs of its population and businesses. It would allow Europe to recover its strategic autonomy and reassert the power that, given the current reshuffling of the geopolitical pack, is vital for peace and stability.
Until now, the European Union focused on diversifying its trading relationships. A partially effective but fundamentally defensive strategy. Environmental security is the next step in the process of derisking. It does not involve looking for resources somewhere else. It means regenerating them here. Reshoring our supply chains to make them shorter and more suited to the new climate and geopolitical realities. Transforming our waste into resources. Creating a truly circular economy. And to grasp the full opportunity this represents, it is worth pausing on one word: resource. ong reduced to an inventory we count, import or deplete, the word carries the promise of something else entirely. It comes from the Old French resourdre: to rise again, like a spring flowing again after a drought. The concept of environmental security shows us the fullness of its meaning.
This switch in perspective changes everything, hinging on a fundamental truth that we underestimate: the resources we need are already here. In our wasted heat, in our waste, in our wastewater. The key lies in understanding that we are not short of resources. It’s the vision we lack.
Environmental security is the ability of a territory to sustainably guarantee access to the resources it depends on. Estelle Brachlianoff.
Take energy as an example. Half the energy consumed in Europe is used for heating. And we waste it. It escapes from factories, sewage plants, and landfills. The Polish city of Poznań has decided to harness heat instead of wasting it. The city has turned its wastewater and surplus heat from a local car plant into a circular energy source. If this approach were applied across the continent, local energy could produce 400 GW, replacing 30% of our fossil fuel imports, enough to provide long-term power to 50 million Europeans.
With critical minerals, it’s even more striking: though scarce in our soil, traces appear everywhere, increasingly concentrated in our electronic waste. This waste alone contains 20% of the rare-earth elements we need. In the French city of Metz, hydrometallurgical extraction is used to extract 99%-pure lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper from end-of-life batteries. At the European scale, we could recover as much as four million tonnes of critical minerals, securing 25% of our needs from local sources. We squander our time and energy looking for resources elsewhere when they are accumulating in front of our eyes - a massive opportunity we can no longer ignore.
And then there is water. For sufficient quantity and quality for all uses, we must protect and recycle it. Up to a third of our water never reaches its destination. But beyond tackling leaks, there’s a silent revolution under way: water reuse. The disparity between Jordan, which reuses 90% of its water, and France, where just 1% is reused, reveals the extent of this untapped potential. New technologies mean we can achieve record levels of purity, tailoring treatments to match uses. Desalination is the answer in parts of the world where access to drinking water is particularly difficult. In Oman, 86% of drinking water comes from it. In two decades, technological progress cut energy consumption by fivefold, reducing costs from 4 euros to under 50 cents per cubic meter. In some parts of the world, such as the Middle East, these critical infrastructures are simply vital. The current conflict has shown they can become central to geopolitical struggles. This is the scale we need to be considering: widespread use of all these solutions would save 34 billion cubic meters of freshwater, enough to keep London supplied for the next 200 years.
Exploiting these new sources requires massive investments. But the math is ruthless: preventing a crisis is eight times cheaper than dealing with the aftermath. Investing in environmental security means investing to make sure that people no longer have to pay the price for crises not of their making. It means investing to restore Europe’s freedom of action, and with it the ability to shape its own destiny.
From Green Deal to Power Deal: The Dawn of a New (Geo) Political Order
The Green Deal gave Europe’s green industrial transformation a ten-year head start. Our regulations on the circular economy, our water treatment technologies, and our innovations for recycling critical metals are all strategic assets. But the Green Deal project was fundamentally defensive and coercive. It may have delivered results, but it has failed to make Europe more powerful.
It’s now time to go on the offensive. Recent crises point the way forward: environmental security is the key to our future power. Guaranteeing access to critical resources means guaranteeing our strategic autonomy. Reshoring our supply chains will create jobs and wealth. Innovating in green tech means conquering tomorrow’s markets.This is what I call the Power Deal.
The Power Deal is based on a simple truth: there can be no equality where there is dependency. Our voice only carries if our strategic depth gives it enough weight. No power can ever depend on others for its defense, healthcare, food, or heat. By reshoring our supply chains we can build a Europe capable of determining its own future, particularly by advancing in sectors essential to sovereignty: defense, pharmaceuticals, the food industry, energy. And we can create a competitiveness shock for our businesses, offering predictability, stability, local jobs, and success in international markets.
But there is no time to lose. This advantage is not baked in. Current affairs offer a brutal reminder, as Ukraine has discovered to its cost. With Russia’s bombing of its power plants, Ukraine has realized that centralized energy infrastructure is an easy target. It has pivoted toward decentralized renewables. Thousands of small solar panels, turbines in multiple locations, resilient local networks, creating fragmented infrastructure that is infinitely more difficult to destroy. This lesson from the war in Ukraine reveals a truth that Europe has to take on board: environmental security also requires resilient energy architecture. Sources of power that cannot be turned off all at once.
Environmental security is not green austerity. It is a new abundance, a project designed to improve people's lives. Estelle Brachlianoff.
Meanwhile, Europe remains hamstrung by its own rulebook. We invented green technologies. But we are incapable of rolling them out fast enough. Solar farm projects are blocked. Wind farms are delayed. And all the time our competitors are striding ahead. We built a legal arsenal, originally for all the right reasons, that is now stopping us from advancing. There are an increasing number of norms. Procedures have become too complex. There are too many possibilities for veto.
We need to shift from a system of prior approval to an approach based on taking responsibility and ex-post evaluation. Simplify procedures, streamline decision-making chains, limit excessive veto powers. Show trust. Assess the results, not simply the processes. But make no mistake, simplifying does not mean abandoning. Businesses need regulatory stability over 10, 15 or 20 years, giving them the horizon to make massive investments and take calculated risks.
Nonetheless, speed alone is not enough. We also need a clear sense of where we are heading, underpinned by a shared narrative. Recent years have seen our liberal democracies accused of powerlessness, unable to promise anything except limits and restrictions. Environmental security offers a chance for political reset. Where previous policies ignored the consequences of our dependency, environmental security is a strategy with people at its heart. It says that protecting our resources means securing our ways of life.
And this is the real strength of environmental security as a project: it is designed to improve people’s lives.
Investing in environmental security means first investing in health. It also means stabilizing people’s spending power by securing access to energy. It means creating jobs that can’t be relocated, in construction, green industries, recycling. It means giving people a chance to plan their futures without fear of upheaval. It means taking back control of our story. It means proclaiming that Europe is not doomed to suffer.
This is the promise of environmental security: not green austerity, not enforced sacrifices, but a new form of abundance. Not unbridled consumerism but secured resources, with stability and shared prosperity. This is the vision Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson articulate:a prosperity rooted in regeneration, not endless extraction.
We have the courage of our ambitions. With the Green Deal we have already shown that we have the ability to set ourselves ambitious goals. Now we need to show that we have the courage of our convictions. The courage to act. We have the technologies. We have the resources. We have the talents. We need to adopt the maneuver warfare mindset: set clear long-term goals and act flexibly, pragmatically, and speedily to achieve them. Between 2010 and 2020, the cost of solar energy fell 90% while wind energy dropped 70%. These lower costs show how once a technology is mature, economies of scale transform the impossible into the inevitable. We have already created the technological miracle of our era. And it’s a miracle we can repeat.
We have the power to build a Europe that is resilient, prosperous, and free. A Europe that plans for shocks rather than suffering them. A Europe in control of its destiny. Estelle Brachlianoff.
This new political order starts now. It will be built brick by brick, with every decision, every investment, every project we commit to. But first of all it begins with simply acknowledging that we are not condemned to powerlessness. We have the power to build a Europe that is resilient, prosperous, and free. A Europe that plans for shocks rather than suffering them. A Europe in control of its destiny.
The coming year will be decisive.
Every passing month sees China strengthen its stranglehold on critical resources, every passing month sees our competitors forge ahead. We don’t have the luxury of waiting. We don’t have the luxury of endless debates. There is a window of opportunity opening in France: now is the moment to redefine our political project, centering it on environmental security. France can be a flag-carrier for this vision, not for nationalistic reasons but because it has always understood how to combine economic ambition with social progress. This ability to leverage environmental performance as a source of power can inspire the rest of Europe. Power founded not on domination but on controlling our resources and our future. If global stability and peace truly remain at the heart of the European project, then we have every reason to act to restore our power.
