On 3rd July 2024, the Directorate General for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) of the European Commission published the Final Report for the study ‘SMEs and Open Strategic Autonomy’, which PPMI co-authored together with CSIL, IDEA Consult and the London School of Economics’ Trade Policy Hub.
‘Open strategic autonomy’ (OSA) refers to the EU’s capacity to act autonomously in strategically important areas of the economy, protecting the EU from unfair trading practices, while also developing mutually beneficial bilateral and multilateral relations.
The main objective of the project was to understand the potential impacts that the OSA approach can have on the EU’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and propose an action plan for a SME-friendly OSA.
To do so, the study team analysed 19 different technologies where the EU is facing significant challenges, or which have significant potential for the EU’s economy in terms of OSA, across nine industrial ecosystems. The study also includes a chapter dedicated to the EU’s strategic autonomy for critical raw materials. PPMI was in charge of the mobility-automotive-transport ecosystem, for which it analysed li-ion batteries and fuel cells; and of the digital ecosystem, with cloud and edge computing, AI and cybersecurity as the selected technologies.
For each technology, the study team presented the positioning of SMEs along the respective value chains, and highlighted some key vulnerabilities, based on evidence gathered through desk research and interviews with experts and industry stakeholders. We then provided an overview of existing relevant policy initiatives in a comparative perspective and concluded with some recommendations for future policy actions. The Final Report tied these recommendations together in an Action Plan aimed at maximising the OSA opportunities for SMEs across five different pillars:
- Strengthening and focusing R&D&I;
- Fostering scaling up;
- Bolstering domestic production and promoting diversification;
- Enhancing the global reach of the EU’s SMEs to ensure a level-playing field;
- Reinforcing marketing intelligence and monitoring.
While the Final Report has been published, dissemination activities will continue for the remainder of the contract, until the first quarter of 2025.
A link to the Final Report can be found here, while ecosystem-specific analyses were published as a separate Annex here.
The project is led by CSIL, in collaboration with PPMI, IDEA Consult and the London School of Economics’ Trade Policy Hub.
