Danilin Ivan Vladimirovich – Ph.D. in Political Sciences, Head of Department for Science and Innovation, IMEMO RAS, Kirichenko Irina Vadimovna – Ph.D. in Economics, Senior Researcher, IMEMO RAS, Shelyubskaya Natalia Vladimirovna – Ph.D. in Economics, Senior Researcher, IMEMO RAS
The EU intensified its efforts to achieve technologic strategic autonomy/sovereignty. The focus is made on China as a key competitor, but the implementation of such a policy depends also on relations with the USA and – especially – India as potential balancer of China. Since 2022, the EU more actively tries to reduce its dependence on Chinese imports and to protect European technology industries. However, to achieve true technological autonomy/sovereignty, policies aimed at developing international partnerships are increasingly important – to improve the sustainability of global value chains (GVC), provide access to non-Chinese manufacturing hubs and innovation ecosystems, and compensate for reduced access to the Chinese domestic market. Accordingly, the EU is promoting an increasingly intensive technological dialogue with India. Efficiency of EU policies is limited. However, the EU’s capabilities for a moderate «decoupling» with China and for cooperation with India as a counterbalance to China are limited, on the one hand, by the challenges of economic development of India, which is not yet capable to become a full-fledged hub for the export of innovative goods from European TNCs associated with the traditional high and medium-high technology industries, on the other hand, by the fact that European corporations are partly unable, and partly not ready, to follow Indian government tech priorities. Among other things, the unbalanced nature of the innovation systems of EU member states reduces the EU’s ability to develop a new system of international economic relations, while the transformation of innovation systems is impossible without changing the EU’s global strategy. As a result, the economic potential of China and the «tech war» of the United States with the PRC become determinants for the technological autonomy of the EU. Presumably, the EU will have to move away from the logic of autonomy/sovereignty in favor of a simple correction of the system of foreign economic relations in the technological sphere.
European Union, China, USA, India, technology, strategic autonomy, technological sovereignty.
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