EU strategic energy autonomy and the electrification strategy

Electrification has moved from a sectoral aspiration to the backbone of the European Union’s decarbonisation strategy, because it alone enables a sustainable break with imported fossil fuels. Yet as this paper argues this shift recasts, rather than resolves, questions of strategic autonomy. Accelerated deployment of renewables, smart grids and digital control systems multiply dependencies on critical raw materials, concentrated clean‑tech supply chains and foreign‑owned data infrastructures, forging a novel energy‑autonomy/digital‑sovereignty nexus. The analysis maps these emerging vulnerabilities and subjects the Union’s legal toolkit to a stress test. Classical internal market instruments, State aid laws in particular, are being re‑interpreted under the resilience agenda launched by the Draghi and Letta reports and now embedded in the Competitiveness Compass and Clean Industrial Deal. Their market integration pedigree and the complexities of the EU governance structure have limited their reach so far. Parallel, more centralizing measures – notably the Net Zero Industry Act and Critical Raw Materials Acts, the revised FDI‑screening regime and the Foreign Subsidies Regulation – signal the advent of a more integrated industrial policy to restrain foreign influence. Yet again, their effectiveness remains unproven. Pending their maturation, competition law, with its doctrinal flexibility and enforcement machinery, might persist as the principal lever for disciplining, in particular, the strategic energy/digital interface. The paper concludes that only a coordinated overhaul of both ‘negative’ integration rules and emergent industrial instruments can secure a resilient, electrified Union.