Can an EU of Preparedness Secure Agricultural Supplies without Derailing the Green Deal?

This thesis investigates how the European Union can strengthen food security crisis preparedness through strategic stockpiling without compromising the environmental commitments of the European Green Deal. Amid intensifying geopolitical conflicts, climate shocks, and supply-chain vulnerabilities, food security has re-emerged as a strategic governance concern for the Union. However, conventional emergency measures risk reinforcing carbon-intensive agricultural production and creating socio-technical path dependencies. This study tests the central hypothesis that strategic stockpiling can reconcile short-term disruption management with long-term agroecological transformation only when designed as a selective, rotating, risk-based instrument embedded within sustainable production networks. Adopting a qualitative comparative research design, the inquiry analyses the contrasting institutional models of Finland—characterised by a whole-of-society security framework, multi-product reserves, and public-private coordination—and France, which relies on high production volume, market fluidity, and state-centric security mechanisms while remaining vulnerable to upstream dependencies in synthetic fertilisers and high-protein animal feed. The analysis extends to the physical, financial, and regulatory constraints of stockpiling chemical inputs, highlighting how broad agrochemical reserves trigger severe regulatory hurdles and directly contradict the target-bound mandates of the Farm to Fork Strategy. The findings reveal that strategic stocks are inherently non-neutral governance tools that redistribute risk across actors, territories, and supply chain nodes. Maximizing material inventories of fossil-based inputs exacerbates lock-in effects, whereas targeted, rotating reserves of essential staples, seeds, and low-emission inputs buy critical decision-making time without legitimizing ecological degradation. The thesis concludes by proposing a layered European preparedness architecture combining harmonized stock reporting, decentralized national storage execution, and strict environmental conditionality in public procurement to operationalize strategic autonomy within ecological boundaries.