The European Union between strategic autonomy and technological sovereignty: impasses and opportunities

The Covid-19 crisis has produced an inflation of speeches on the need for Europe to increase control over its production, its sovereignty but also to increase its weight and autonomy in relation to the great world powers (China and the United States) in order to assert its own position. We can see an increase in the number of declarations by EU officials in this direction, from representatives of Member State governments to European institutions. Remarkably, as soon as she was appointed in 2019, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced her vision of a "geopolitical" Commission, thus expressing the project of reinforcing the role and legitimacy of the Union as a global actor. [...]