European security in a changing geo-political context. From the European Research Area to the European Defence Research and Innovation Area and from Cohesion to European territorial security policy

European policymakers face difficult trade-offs when aiming to increase economic growth and industrial competitiveness, stepping up efforts in green and digital economies, and coming to terms with new security realities requiring increased investments. As European and several national elections in 2024 have shown, this is not an easy circle to square. This paper makes an argument for the European Union to develop a coherent and overarching approach to security investments aligned with the current green and digital agendas and based on a broadening of two of Europe’s unique, long-standing policy frameworks. The first is the area of research and innovation policy, where the nature of the multi-level governance between the EU and its Member States has been one of “shared parallel competence”, implying that EU Member States can carry out national science and research policies in parallel to the EU. This institutional set-up offers the opportunity to broaden, in a relatively straightforward way, the current European Research and Innovation Area (ERA) into a European Defence Research and Innovation Area (EDRIA). The second framework is the EU’s regional, so-called cohesion policy, which could be described as Europe’s “secret” weapon. The integration of security issues into European regional policies represents, in the current insecure international geo-political environment, a logical, new expression of intra-regional European solidarity, and offers the opportunity to enlarge current cohesion policy towards a European territorial security policy.