Ευρωπαϊκή Επιτροπή

The EESC emphasises that peace must remain a core EU priority and cautions against focusing solely on military threats while overlooking other serious risks to human life. It stresses the importance of diplomacy for conflict resolution and crisis prevention wherever possible.The EESC supports a comprehensive, inclusive European defence strategy that supplements military readiness with civil preparedness. It endorses the European Commission’s Joint white Paper for European Defence – Readiness 2030 and calls for a coordinated EU approach that treats defence, peace and security as shared public goods, underpinned by strong legal, institutional and financial frameworks with democratic oversight.

The EESC welcomes the overall positive trade balance of the EU and calls for measures to maintain it, while recommending targeted support for strategically important industries, stronger investment conditions, and effective financing through the Single Market, the Savings and Investments Union, and a more integrated capital market. The EESC also underlines the need to support ambitious companies entering global markets, ensure opportunities for highly skilled professionals, simplify procedures without undermining social and environmental standards, create fiscal space for growth-enhancing investments, and strengthen multilateralism through new trade agreements and WTO reforms.

The EESC expresses concerns over rising geopolitical risks, unstable trade dynamics, and the investment deficit in Europe, stressing the need to strengthen EU competitiveness and enhance defence capabilities. The Committee also believes that it is necessary to adopt a set of measures to strengthen investment by ensuring the implementation of all Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) funds, with the new targets and, if necessary, deploying unused funds for new investment programmes in European public goods, creating a European Fund for Strategic Investment, strengthening the EIB's lending capacity to expand InvestEU and exploring the possibility of using European Stability Mechanism funds.

Given the significance of the provision of public goods for the well-being of the citizens, the EESC believes that particular attention should be paid to providing these European public goods (EPGs) and identifying them in the next multiannual financial framework (MFF) post-2027.

Special attention must be given to ‘functional EPGs’ – those linked to Article 3 TEU – that can ensure the normal functioning of the EU: the completion of the single market; the completion of the economic and monetary union; economic, social and territorial cohesion; EU open strategic autonomy (e.g. the joint EU health policy, food security, the EU energy union); defence and security; EU research and development; and the rule of law.

The EESC assesses how the EU’s sustainable finance framework can be made more robust and fit for purpose given its importance for the EU’s economic, social and climate objectives. The EESC affirms that simplification should not come at the cost of ambition. While administrative streamlining is needed, the focus should be on how requirements can be implemented more effectively, not on weakening standards. The EU’s regulatory strength and predictability are important competitive advantages that should be preserved amid growing geopolitical and economic uncertainty.