Strategic sovereignty: definition and challenges
13 Aug 2025
In a world marked by health crises, geopolitical tensions, and cyberattacks, strategic sovereignty is no longer reserved for states. Companies, whether industrial, service, or technological, must also ensure their autonomy, protect their critical resources, and ensure their resilience against external shocks.
What is corporate strategic sovereignty?
Corporate strategic sovereignty refers to an organisation's ability to control its critical resources, avoid risky dependencies, and maintain operations regardless of economic, regulatory, or geopolitical disruptions.
This definition includes:
Physical resources: raw materials, components, production sites.
Human resources: key skills, rare expertise.
Intangible resources: data, software, brands.
Commercial relationships: clients, suppliers, partners.
The special framework of the European Union
For EU Member States, and therefore for companies based there, sovereignty over foreign trade flows is considered at the European Union level.
Why? Because the EU holds exclusive competence in common commercial policy (Article 3 of the TFEU), meaning that:
Trade agreements, customs duties, and economic defence measures are decided in Brussels.
Companies benefit directly from conditions negotiated by the EU.
Concrete example: a French SME exporting medical equipment to Japan depends on the conditions set by the EU-Japan free trade agreement. Even if France wanted to modify these conditions alone, it would be unable to.
The three goals of strategic sovereignty
Autonomy: to prevent the halt of a foreign supplier, market closure, or external regulatory change from jeopardising operations.
Security: to protect physical and digital assets against threats (cyberattacks, industrial espionage, intellectual property theft, legal extraterritoriality).
Resilience: to be able to quickly adapt to major geopolitical or regulatory disruptions.
The 4 pillars for measuring strategic sovereignty
Open Sovereignty has developed a unique methodology to evaluate strategic sovereignty in 4 blocks:
Governance: registration location, control country, strategic compliance of leaders (AML/CFT, sanctions, PEP).
Revenue: geographical diversification of clients and exposure to risk zones.
Procurement: origin of direct (tier 1) and indirect suppliers (tier 2), critical dependencies.
Digital: control of tools, network infrastructures, and APIs.
The SovTrack score is the simple average of these 4 blocks, each scored out of 100. See the methodology in detail.
Why it's crucial in 2025
Supply chains under strain: war in Ukraine, tensions in Asia, rising protectionism.
Stricter regulations: CSRD (non-financial reporting), DORA (digital resilience), Net-Zero Industry Act.
Increased demand from clients and investors for more transparency and sovereignty.
How does Open Sovereignty support companies?
Personalised evaluation and free via declarative questionnaire or verified audit.
Immediate sectoral diagnosis based on public data.
Improvement plan on each strategic block.
Communication tools to enhance the score with clients, investors, and public partners.
Understanding what corporate strategic sovereignty is, is a first step.
The real question for a leader or decision-maker now is: how to know where one stands?
And after? Moving from definition to measurement
Open Sovereignty offers a clear framework, structured around four complementary blocks, to evaluate a company's sovereignty in a precise and comparable manner.
This methodology makes it possible to identify strengths, reveal hidden dependencies, and prioritise actions.
In the next article, discover how to measure the strategic sovereignty of a company in 4 blocks and understand the logic behind the SovTrack score.
