EU should avoid mistaking true partner for strategic rival

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen reportedly proposes to establish a European Security Council. That may prove to be one of the most consequential ideas in her State of the Union address on Wednesday.

However, some have questioned whether that will become less a forum for defining Europe’s own security concerns and more another mechanism for turning China into a de facto permanent strategic target.

The European Union needs greater strategic autonomy, not another institution organized around someone else’s rivalry.

The distinction matters because the EU’s security problems are not caused by China. The EU faces conflict on its eastern flank, energy insecurity, migration pressures, cyber threats, supply-chain vulnerabilities and technological dependence.

It also faces a profound competitiveness problem. The euro area’s GDP only grew by 0.3 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2026. Annual growth is forecast at only 1.1 percent. Germany, France and Italy are barely moving. Energy-intensive EU industries such as chemicals, steel and aluminum have lost competitiveness.

Energy policy is perhaps the clearest pain point. After the Ukraine crisis, Europe moved away from relatively cheap Russian gas without securing equally affordable alternatives. So renewables accounted for just 46 percent of electricity generation in the EU in the first quarter of 2026, leaving more than half of Europe to source its energy from imported fossil fuels. The International Monetary Fund estimates that internal EU barriers are equivalent to a 44 percent tariff on goods and a 110 percent tariff on services.

Former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi’s 2024 competitiveness report identified weak innovation investment, fragmented markets and inadequate financing among Europe’s central problems.

Nearly two years later, only 15.7 percent of the report’s 383 recommendations have reportedly been fully implemented. Europe does not need a new strategic institution to explain these failures. It needs to implement the reforms it already knows are necessary.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited China in February and saw firsthand both the scale of Chinese industrial competition and the pressures facing German companies.

Yet, in recent months, he has been supporting tougher EU trade measures against China and urging the European Commission to refine its trade policy toolbox ahead of the October consultations with China. The political pressure from the opposition Alternative for Germany is obvious. But European security should not be defined by the domestic electoral pressures of individual governments.

The German government should address the genuine concerns the AfD is raising — rising energy costs, deindustrialization, migration pressures and stagnant living standards — rather than allow them to be converted into a permanent search for foreign antagonists.

A Bertelsmann Stiftung survey of 228 European companies, published on Monday, found that more than half had no plans to diversify away from China; only 4 percent planned to reduce direct investment there and 3 percent to cut research and development.

Businesses are not ignoring geopolitical risks. They are seeking resilience. That is what “de-risking” should mean. It should not automatically mean “decoupling”.

This distinction should guide the proposed European Security Council. If founded, it should examine genuine security vulnerabilities arising from dependence on energy, critical minerals, technology, military capabilities or external coercion. A security institution that begins with the assumption that China is the principal “threat” would quickly become an instrument of geopolitical alignment rather than European strategic autonomy.

Von der Leyen’s proposal therefore faces a simple test. Will the council help the EU find the resolve to tackle its internal challenges? The EU needs the capacity to think for itself, not another institution through which someone else’s strategic rivalry is imported into EU policy.

A European Security Council should be a council for European security — not another China-targeting mechanism by another name.

As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasized in telephone talks with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Monday, China and Europe should properly address the current economic and trade frictions through constructive dialogue and avoid escalating confrontation.

Of late, whenever the EU runs up against intractable problems at home, it drags the China-related issues into the discussion to take the pressure off Brussels. That is irresponsible, and it does nothing to help China-EU relations develop steadily.