If you were wondering what the modish policy buzzphrase “economic security” means, you’re about to watch the European Commission have a five-year-long turf war over it. On Tuesday, commission president Ursula von der Leyen created a portfolio that combined economic security with trade and subjected it to an overlord for “prosperity and industrial strategy”, scattering responsibility for industrial policy liberally around the new commission.
If von der Leyen really wants to balance open trade and robust growth with supply-chain resilience and geopolitical coherence — the best one-clause definition of economic security I can think of — she might look at Australia. A close US ally with a small open economy on the front line of Chinese political and economic pressure, Australia has had to think about this earlier than most.
The result is not principally notable on the institutional level, where the country in any case has intrinsic advantages over the EU. It’s more that Australia’s economic and securocrat policymakers seem to have absorbed each others’ mindsets and synthesised their approaches rather than operating in a state of permanent tension. It’s closer to John Lennon and Paul McCartney than Noel and Liam Gallagher.