Rethinking Europe’s economic security: Strategic de-risking and the case for the ‘trusted six’

From pandemics and supply chain shocks to conflicts around the world, events continue to expose the vulnerabilities of Europe and its closest partners to geoeconomic and geopolitical disruption. This paper argues for the creation of partnership between the European Union and a ‘Trusted Six’ (T6) caucus of the UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand to tackle the shared challenges of economic security and strategic resilience.

At a moment when China and the United States are flexing their hard power muscles and the ‘middle powers’ of the world are each seeking strategies to limit their dependencies, the T6 offers a pragmatic mechanism to ‘friendshore’ critical supply chains, share the costs of derisking, and coordinate trade defence.

While such partnerships too often stall in the midst of complex negotiations and duplicated effort, the T6 model offers a decisive path for the EU its closest like-minded partners to move the middle power debate from rhetoric to reality.

This paper was published in partnership with the Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung (FES). A version will also be made available on the FES website.

Image credit: Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street via Flickr.