欧盟国防融资：需求、目标与进展

Philipp Lausberg,Senior Policy Analyst, European Policy Centre Author: Philipp Lausberg,Senior Policy Analyst, European Policy Centre Project Lead: Zuzana Peláková,Director, Centre for Economy & Business, GLOBSEC Editors: Nicola Billota,Economist Fellow, GLOBSECKatarína Strauszová, Project Specialist, Centre for Economy & Business, GLOBSEC Design: The European CompetitivenessContext Competitiveness has become a defining strategic priority for the European Union (EU). Long-standing structuralchallenges, such as low productivity growth and persistent investment gaps, now intersect with new vulnerabil-ities, including technological dependence and the geopolitical context. The EU can no longer assume a globaleconomic environment shaped by stable globalisation or unconditional transatlantic alignment. In this context,competitiveness is not just a buzzword or a narrow economic ambition. As emphasised in the Draghi report,1competitiveness has become a vital condition for the EU’s capacity to sustain its model of prosperity and pre-serve strategic autonomy in a world where economic and security dynamics are increasingly intertwined. For the EU, this challenge presents both opportunities and vulnerabilities. While the Draghi report has re-shaped the political framing of competitiveness within the European Commission (EC), its diagnosis has beentranslated into a concrete policy agenda. The EC has since anchored competitiveness in theCompetitivenessCompass,a monitoring framework for productivity, innovation, skills, energy affordability, and capital allocation.It has launched theClean Industrial Dealto accelerate industrial transformation, scaling strategic sectors, andaligning the green transition with competitiveness. Interlinked with this ambition, the EC developed theAfford-able Energy Action Plan,which aims to reduce energy costs, support energy-intensive industries, and ensurethat the transition to net-zero does not undermine industrial competitiveness. Furthermore, building on the Dra-ghi report, the EC moved to address the internal market frictions that undermine the EU’s growth potential. Therelaunch of theCapital Markets Union,now reinforced through the proposedSavings and Investment Union,aims to unlock Europe’s large pool of private savings into productive investment, particularly in research, inno-vation, and scale-up financing. In parallel, theSimplification Agendatargets to mitigate regulatory bottlenecksand administrative burdens, recognising that regulatory speed and costs have become a competitiveness fac-tor in themselves. Finally, theUnion of Skillshas been introduced to tackle growing labour and skills shortagesin key sectors, aligning training, mobility and talent attraction policies with Europe’s industrial and technologicalpriorities. In this way, competitiveness is no longer treated as a sectoral concern, but is embedded as the underlyingstrategic objective for sustaining growth and preserving Europe’s strategic autonomy. Nevertheless, the ef-fectiveness of this ambitious vision will depend on translating it into coordinated policy actions, supported bysustained political commitment and effective cooperation between national and European institutions. Against this backdrop, GLOBSEC has launched theGLOBSEC Competitiveness Tracker(Tracker) as a targetedfollow-up to the EC’s Competitiveness Compass and its broader agenda that positions competitiveness at thecore of Europe’s strategic economic direction. TheTrackeraddresses a key question: not only whether the EUhas set the right priorities, but whether it can deliver them in practice and how implementation can be strength-ened to mitigate existing barriers and gaps. Its impact will ultimately depend on the degree to which these pol-icies are effectively implemented and yield real economic outcomes. As such, theTrackermonitors progressbeyond formal commitments and legislative milestones - analysing whether EU-level initiatives are aligned withthe needs, constraints and opportunities faced by industry, and investors and public institutions on the ground.In doing so, it aims to identify where momentum is building, where gaps persist, and where recalibration maybe necessary. Rather than offering critique from afar, the Tracker is conceived as a practical tool to provide EUand national stakeholders with a clear understanding of how the competitiveness policy agenda is implement-ed in practice. A distinctive feature of thisTrackeris its focused attention on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This is notincidental. The region sits at the intersection of two dynamics that are central to the EU’s competitivenessagenda: the need to adapt to a more exposed geopolitical environment, and the transition from growthmodels based on cost advantages to those driven by innovation, skills and technological capacity. The speedand effectiveness with which CEE economies can make this shift will shape not only their own developmenttrajectory, but the cohesio