- Strategic autonomy can be defined as the ability to act autonomously in various areas, a concept that should not be confused with autarky or isolationism.
- Telefónica refers to strategic autonomy as the ‘cornerstone of European industrial policy’.
What is strategic autonomy?
Strategic autonomy refers to the ability of a region in general or a country in particular to, as its name suggests, act autonomously when necessary and also cooperate multilaterally when the occasion requires it.
Referring to various sectors such as security, the economy, energy or technology, strategic autonomy therefore refers to reducing dependence on other agents, but without renouncing cooperation with them.
It should be noted, in accordance with the definition we have just given, that strategic autonomy is not a term synonymous with isolationism or autarky.
European strategic autonomy
As explained above, strategic autonomy refers to a state or region. In this article, we will look specifically at the example of the European Union.
This supranational organisation of a continental nature, whose origins date back to the mid-20th century, although it was established as such in the 1990s, explains that European strategic autonomy involves ‘reducing the EU’s dependence on others, for example in terms of critical materials and technologies, food, infrastructure and security’.
Likewise, the website of the European Council, one of the main institutions of the EU, also refers to this strategic autonomy as ‘an opportunity to develop markets, products and services and boost competitiveness’ within the 27 member states.
Digital strategic autonomy
With regard to digital strategic autonomy, as its name suggests, we can explain that it refers precisely to having the capacity to make decisions autonomously and to have the necessary means to act in accordance with those decisions in the digital sphere.
This strategic digital autonomy is of great importance not only in terms of technology, which may seem the most obvious, but also in other areas such as digital reindustrialisation, innovation and even issues such as the green economy.
In particular, technologies such as AI and cloud computing are some of the most relevant points in relation to European strategic digital autonomy, due to the enormous dependence on other actors.
A recent article on our blog highlights the importance of strategic digital autonomy in the current European institutional cycle.
Precisely in line with the dependence we mentioned earlier, the article points out that Europe is 80% dependent on digital technologies and services from third countries, as exemplified by cloud services, a segment in which Amazon, Microsoft and Google account for 70% of the European market.
Telefónica’s position on industrial policy and strategic autonomy
Telefónica has a position on industrial policy that also refers to strategic autonomy, considered to be ‘the cornerstone of European industrial policy’.
The operator emphasises that strategic autonomy ‘has become the new direction of industrial policies to implement a strategy that reduces the potential risks arising from asymmetries in economic interdependencies in the long term’.
Applied to the digital sphere, this ‘involves striking a balance between operating more autonomously in strategic areas and cooperating with third parties to ensure permanent access to critical technologies and secure digital supply chains’.
Regarding the role of the Old Continent in these matters, Telefónica considers that ‘Europe’s vulnerability has become apparent when the dependencies of its industrial value chains on third countries have had a direct impact on its economy’.
