Europe faces multiple, overlapping challenges: geopolitical instability, ecological pressures, and concerns over long-term economic competitiveness. These issues are often framed in policy debates as competing priorities. At the Europe Forum events in Turku (2024 and 2025), panelists frequently posed the question of whether EU resources should be directed toward defense and security or toward sustainable growth, cohesion, and agriculture [1]–[4]. This article explores how such framings may overstate the trade-offs. Drawing on Forum debates and ongoing EU projects, it examines the extent to which security, competitiveness, and sustainability can be understood as interdependent dimensions of a coherent European agenda.
At the 2024 Forum session on European competitiveness, it was emphasized that competitiveness is inseparable from security [1]. The upcoming EU Council Presidency was noted as placing emphasis on defense industry financing, border resilience, and energy independence. This reflects a growing recognition that secure borders, reliable energy systems, and resilient food and digital infrastructures underpin Europe’s ability to compete internationally.
Forum discussions also highlighted the long-term economic and innovation gap facing the EU. Panelists noted that the EU’s share of global GDP has declined from approximately 25% to 17% over the past two decades [1]. U.S. workers are estimated to be around 10% more productive than their EU counterparts, partly due to faster uptake of AI, cloud computing, and big data. Europe continues to excel in basic research, but struggles to commercialize and scale innovation, as illustrated by the case of mRNA vaccine development, which was invented in Europe but scaled in the U.S. and UK [1].
The 2024 session Riding the Wave – Ensuring Water Security in the Baltic Sea Region underscored how water management is increasingly framed as a strategic concern rather than a purely environmental one [2]. Floods, droughts, and nutrient pollution were noted as imposing annual costs of €9–40 billion across Europe, and the forthcoming EU Water Resilience Strategy was presented as a vehicle to connect circular economy principles—such as wastewater innovation and nutrient recycling—with broader objectives of resilience and autonomy. This perspective was reinforced in the 2025 session on nutrient recycling, which emphasized policy instruments such as producer responsibility in wastewater treatment [3]. Taken together, these discussions suggest a gradual reframing of sustainability initiatives as central components of resilience and security, rather than as separate or secondary policy domains.
In 2025, discussions on the future of EU regional development funding considered whether cohesion resources should be redirected toward defense and security or continue to support agriculture, growth, and regional balance [4]. Concerns were raised that the proposed envelope model might reduce transparency and weaken the EU’s added value by shifting decision-making more firmly to national levels. Debate also highlighted the risk that shifting discretion to member states could fragment cohesion policy and undermine long-term solidarity across regions. Regional perspectives emphasized that local and regional authorities are central to implementing EU objectives in areas such as the green and digital transitions, cautioning against their exclusion from planning processes. While some framed these developments as a trade-off between cohesion and security, others stressed the potential for complementarity: investments in defense industries, critical infrastructure, and green technologies could be pursued in a coordinated way to reinforce both security and sustainable growth [5].
Current EU-funded projects (the three below as illustrative, not exhaustive examples) suggest that the boundaries between sustainability, competitiveness, and security are being blurred in practice. Rather than a zero-sum trade-off, these initiatives show how circular economy and soil health innovation can strengthen resilience, autonomy, and economic competitiveness:
Efforts in EU research and innovation projects already demonstrate ways in which sustainability, competitiveness, and security can reinforce one another. However, these linkages are not always made explicit in higher-level policy debates. Forum discussions at times presented the three priorities as if they were in tension, even though project-level practice suggests opportunities for alignment. Security concerns can stimulate investment in resilience; sustainability initiatives can reduce strategic vulnerabilities; and competitiveness increasingly relies on the ability to innovate across both green and defense-related sectors. The challenge for the EU may therefore lie in making this integrated perspective more visible and in embedding it more consistently within funding frameworks and strategic planning.
The Europe Forum debates of 2024 and 2025 highlighted tensions between funding for defense and for sustainability. However, contributions also pointed to possible pathways toward integration, particularly in recognizing water, soil, and nutrient cycles as strategic assets. Ongoing EU projects reinforce this by demonstrating that innovation in circular economy and soil health serves competitiveness and security as well as environmental goals. A more integrated agenda could help the EU avoid framing these priorities as zero-sum, and instead promote long-term resilience and autonomy.
Integrating Security, Competitiveness, and Sustainability: Insights from Europe Forum Debates 2024/5 and EU Projects
Introduction
1. Security as Competitiveness
2. The Economic and Innovation Gap
3. Sustainability as Security
4. Regional Development Funding and Cohesion Policy
5. EU R&I Projects as Proof of an Emerging Integrated Agenda
6. Toward an Integrated Agenda
Conclusion
References
Visited 4 times, 5 visit(s) today