The evolution of European and national policies in recent years highlights a growing tension between environmental protection, traditionally oriented towards the principles of sustainable development, and the emergence of new security needs.
This concept, which has become an integral part of EU policies, encompasses multiple areas, allowing for a broader definition than that traditionally associated with the concept of public order.
The proposed paper, therefore, focuses on the concepts of national security and economic security, and aims to critically analyze their tension with environmental values and the principle of sustainability. It begins with the observation that these legal categories, originating in distinct contexts, today tend to overlap and sometimes conflict, especially in the context of geopolitical crises and global industrial competition.
On the one hand, European and constitutional law has progressively strengthened the centrality of environmental protection, integrating it into economic and market policies and recognizing it as a transversal value essential to sustainable development.
The evolution of European environmental constitutionalism demonstrates how sustainability and economics are increasingly conceived in terms of interdependence, moving beyond the view of the environment as a mere negative constraint on economic initiative.
Similarly, public procurement law has undergone a process of renewal through multi-faceted instruments such as minimum environmental criteria and Green Public Procurement policies, targeting social and environmental sustainability objectives.
On the other hand, recent international dynamics – including armed conflicts, energy crises, and the reorganization of European industrial chains – are redefining public policy priorities, with potential negative repercussions on the many sustainability commitments undertaken.
The increase in defense investment and the growing importance of defense procurement highlight how national security can lead to exceptions or mitigations from established environmental sustainability models.
In this context, the national security exception and the specialization of military procurement risk to remove entire market segments from the logic of sustainability, potentially leading to a retreat from the principles of the Green Deal, creating a reserved sector completely removed from the European integration process.
At the same time, the debate on economic security and European industrial competitiveness tends to perceive certain environmental policies as cost factors or regulatory rigidities, fueling a conflict between sustainability and competitiveness, seen as principles that are difficult to reconcile within a balanced framework.
The report proposes to overcome this tension through the development of legal and administrative criteria capable of fostering a dialogue between the environment and security.
In particular, a reinterpretation of the notion of security in a pluralistic sense – from traditional security to environmental, energy, and economic “securities” – is assumed. This would favour the integration of states’ strategic needs with sustainability objectives, in the spirit of integrated and cohesive development that puts people at the center.
The goal is to demonstrate that environment and security are not opposing categories, but rather dimensions of the same contemporary public governance paradigm, in which sustainability can represent not a limitation but rather a factor of strategic resilience and strengthening of the European economic system.
Starting from this perspective, we must therefore reflect on a possible regulatory framework within which the proposed themes can be fully balanced.