EU Parliament Member: ‘Where Is Our Own EU Entity List?’
The EU needs to overhaul its approach to export controls so it can better respond to rising extraterritorial restrictions by the U.S. and China, a European Parliament member told a conference of EU and U.S. government and industry officials last week.
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Marketa Gregorova, a Czech member of Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, warned that the EU risks losing its export control “agency” and “foreign policy credibility” if it doesn’t figure out how to better wield its controls and reduce its dependencies on China and the U.S. in several critical areas.
She noted that the U.S. has increasingly expanded its Entity List and uses restrictions over exports of sensitive semiconductor technology to “manage strategic competition” with China, while Beijing has responded with its own set of critical mineral export controls that have affected companies around the world.
The EU, meanwhile, may not be taking enough action, Gregorova told the EU’s Export Control Forum in Brussels. “Where is our deterrent to U.S. extraterritorial rules?” she said. “Where is our own EU Entity List?”
Gregorova said the expanding U.S. Entity List is affecting European advanced technology companies “hard,” and other extraterritorial uses of American controls are “overtaking our own agency to shape the technological global competition.” It’s “obvious” from China’s rare earth restrictions that Beijing “does not treat the EU as a serious independent player, but merely as an afterthought.” She specifically pointed to the fact that, “instead of China excluding EU companies from its trade war with the U.S. from the beginning,” the EU was forced to scramble to try to secure expedited license reviews or exemptions from China’s rare earth controls (see 2511040026 and 2409090048).
“Both sides, of course, use export controls to shape supply chains, influence technological trajectories and defend their national security interests,” Gregorova said. “Europe cannot pretend that export controls remain a narrow technical discipline. So where is the EU's role?”
The EU lacks a “truly common vision” about how export controls play into the bloc’s broader industrial and geopolitical strategy, she argued. The EU also lacks a “shared sense of urgency” across all member states, with no centralized institution that could help it analyze supply chain risks and technological dependencies.
“Will we continue to rely on external impulses, on the whims of Xi [Jinping] and [Donald] Trump, or will we shape export controls as an area where the union leads?”
Gregorova also said the EU has shown a “persistent failure” to control exports of dangerous cyber surveillance tools that can be misused by foreign governments or bad actors. Last year, it issued long-awaited guidelines that outlined how exporters should identify cyber surveillance technologies that should be restricted (see 2410160027), but Gregorova said not enough is being done to hold member states accountable.
She cited a recent EU report that showed that just 14 member states “submitted complete or meaningful data on cyber surveillance items.”
“Ignoring even the export of spyware sends the message that we cannot control it,” she said. “European companies have continued to export intrusive surveillance capabilities to destinations where they can be misused.”
Gregorova also touched on the multilateral Wassenaar Arrangement, which has been stalled by Russia’s continued membership because Moscow can veto any new export control proposals. The EU must instead “develop the capacity to act collectively and autonomously whenever the multilateral system is blocked,” she said. “How this looks is for all of us to figure out, but the cost of doing nothing is rising rapidly.”
Maros Sefcovic, the EU commissioner for trade and economic security, also said during the forum that Russia has been “effectively paralyzing” Wassenaar. “This puts pressure on the EU member states and our partners to take action outside of multilateral regimes, something which threatens to reduce the effectiveness of the latter, while increasing the risk” of the “fragmentation” of the EU single market.
“If it's not coordinated on the international level, if you do not have the European level to deliver what is expected, then of course, the competencies are with the member states, and then you have divergences in how these are applied, and it's different from country to country,” he said.
Gregorova said the EU’s current approach to export controls needs more than “cosmetic changes,” calling for a more “centralized” strategy, such as a new dedicated EU “analytical body” to analyze supply chain choke points in real time.
“Export controls are now a core instrument of economic security and geopolitical strategy. The European Union must therefore move from a reactive posture to proactive leadership, and this requires reform and even increased centralization,” Gregorova said. “One thing is crystal clear. If we fail to act together, we will act too slowly or not at all.”