Commissioned by: Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research
Study by: Austrian Institute of Economic Research
Online since: 18.01.2024 0:00
Interrupted supply chains in the wake of COVID-19 and Russia's attack on Ukraine have highlighted the geopolitical risks of
sourcing critical raw materials and products from a small number of authoritarian countries. The EU has initiated a flurry
of activities to reduce unilateral dependencies, witnessed by trade, innovation and industrial policy instruments, such as
the IPCEIs, the Chips Act and new anti-subsidy measures. This policy brief focuses on fostering technological sovereignty
to insure against risks from international trade specifically in critical general purpose technologies. Bundles of innovation,
industrial and trade policies enter three consistent policy mixes according to the distance to the technological frontier:
for emerging technologies, the frontier policy mix emphasises an improvement in general framework conditions such as a more
integrated European capital market. Technologies which lag behind the frontier benefit from coordinated support within the
catch-up policy mix, while technologies at risk of losing their position at the frontier fall within the remit of the defensive
policy mix.
Research group:Industrial, Innovation and International Economics
Language:German
Innovations-, Industrie- und Handelspolitik zur Förderung technologischer Souveränität