New EC report calls for a move beyond a narrow view of defence, aligning R&I and sustainability to strengthen long-term economic and strategic resilience.
As geopolitical, environmental and technological threats facing Europe multiply, the narrow definition of defence is becoming obsolete. In its recent report on Research & Innovation for Long-Term Resilience, the expert group on the economic and societal impact of research and innovation (ESIR) argues that Europe must adopt a much wider understanding of defence. It proposes a definition that connects military preparedness with sustainability, competitiveness, and the long-term resilience of societies. The report situates today’s urgent pressure: China’s drive for export-led growth, a less predictable United States, the war in Ukraine- alongside long-term challenges such as accelerating climate impacts, ageing populations, biodiversity loss, and shifting industrial geography. The question at the heart of the report is what kind of strategic approach can address this expanded risk landscape, and how public spending frameworks should evolve to advance Europe’s short- and long-term defence, sustainability and technological objectives simultaneously.
The report proposes three broad avenues for action via place-based solutions that emphasise bottom-up creativity and empowerment. The first concerns dual-use research and innovation, arguing that the separation between civil and defence-related R&I is no longer viable. The report echoes an earlier ESIR report on dual use, underlining that technologies like AI, robotics and biotechnology inherently serve multiple purposes: they can enable cleaner production, support resource allocation and enhance climate resilience, yet also underpin advanced defence capabilities. The reality the report makes clear is that the strict line once drawn between civilian and military research has dissolved. This call to action on dual-use is integrated with addressing the EU’s fragmented R&I funding landscape. European R&I operating in silos has led to a situation where the urgent responses to geopolitical competition, such as rearmament, reshoring, and industrial subsidies, risk undermining longer-term climate and sustainability goals. As noted in a recent Science Business article, EU policymakers increasingly view climate action through the lens of global tech competition, a shift that ESIR seeks to address via a more integrated R&I framework that encourages innovation with both civilian and defence applications, manages associated risks, and embeds ethical guardrails, while also coordinating with instruments such as the European Defence Fund. In this sense, dual-use investment becomes not a compromise but an opportunity: a means to generate competitiveness, strategic autonomy and sustainability at once.
The second proposed strategy design concerns resilience and sustainability, which ESIR presents as inseparable from security itself. The report argues that resource productivity, resilient infrastructure and new forms of international partnerships are essential pillars of Europe’s long-term resilience. Reducing Europe’s dependence on imported primary materials, enhancing circularity and innovating around scarce inputs, is described as a strategic necessity, especially as climate change and geopolitical tensions intensify supply chain disruptions. Infrastructures too, whether energy, digital or transport, must be rethought with resilience by design, capable of withstanding both extreme weather and hybrid attacks. This broader framing ties directly to the report’s finding that Europe’s environmental vulnerabilities constitute material security risks. The report also emphasises that the EU can neither standalone nor remain entangled in “fragile or unbalanced” dependencies. It therefore advocates a new architecture of trusted international partnerships that bolster European autonomy while enabling mutual economic and scientific benefit. This includes global green alliances, diversified sourcing through geo-industrial cooperation, collaborative governance of global commons such as the oceans and cyberspace, and expanded people-to-people diplomacy through Erasmus+, Horizon Europe mobility and other channels that embed shared innovation ecosystems.
The final dimension of the report concerns the role of incumbents and start-ups in building new forms of resilience. Europe remains a continent of industrial firms whose capacity to adopt and develop emerging technologies is central to competitiveness and the green transition. Yet the report warns that large existing firms and corporations alone cannot secure Europe’s future technological position. Start-ups, scale-ups and regional innovation ecosystems are increasingly shaping Europe’s strategic capabilities, particularly in fields such as AI, autonomous systems and advanced manufacturing. Initiatives like the European Innovation Council, the EU Startup and Scale-up Strategy and the European Defence Innovation Scheme reflect a recognition that new entrants bring not only technological breakthroughs but also new business models and new geographical bases of innovation. The report stresses that resilience must be built not only at the EU level but in local and regional ecosystems, where the interdependencies between climate, infrastructure, economic activity and social cohesion are most directly experienced. In this sense, resilience becomes not simply a policy goal but a unifying framework for European action linking the short-term imperatives of defence with the long-term foundations of sustainability and stability.
Europe’s risk landscape has expanded, and its definition of defence must adapt. The ESIR report offers a strategy and pathway aimed at sustaining Europe’s security and competitiveness, and maintaining a focus on long term imperatives. Defence, sustainability and innovation can no longer be pursued as separate policy domains, but must be deliberately aligned investment and governance choices. In doing so, Europe has the opportunity not only to respond to immediate geopolitical pressures, but to shape a long term resilient model of growth and security suited to an uncertain world.