IN Brief:
- Sixty-four per cent of EU companies surveyed consider themselves prepared for geopolitical risks, although preparedness varies substantially by company size.
- Reported logistics, raw-material, and semiconductor obstacles fell between 2023 and 2025 as regulatory and tariff concerns rose.
- Companies exposed outside the EU are increasingly treating supplier diversification and trade compliance as structural supply-chain requirements.
European Investment Bank research with the European Commission shows that EU companies are moving away from short-term supply-chain crisis responses as tariffs, regulation, and geopolitical exposure become more persistent features of international trade.
The study, based on the EIB’s 2025 Supply Chain Survey and Investment Survey, finds that 64% of EU companies consider themselves prepared to manage geopolitical risks. Preparedness rises to 73% among the largest companies but falls below half among smaller businesses, exposing a capacity gap when supply-chain redesign requires new suppliers, systems, inventory policies, and working capital.
The type of disruption being reported has also shifted. Between 2023 and 2025, the share of EU companies identifying raw-material constraints as an obstacle fell from 27% to 8%, semiconductor problems from 15% to 3%, and logistics disruption from 28% to 12%. Regulatory compliance is now cited as a major obstacle by 20% of businesses, while 18% point to customs and tariff changes.
The operating problem has moved from securing a container or component towards deciding where a product can be sourced, what documentation it needs, and what duty exposure exists when it crosses a border. Disciplines built during the pandemic and subsequent freight disruption remain useful, but more of the risk now sits in supplier selection, trade compliance, product classification, and the commercial assumptions written into contracts.
The report draws on a dedicated survey of 1,165 EU importers and exporters, alongside the EIB Investment Survey covering around 12,000 European companies and 800 US businesses. It also finds that companies are relying less on emergency adjustments. The share of EU importers making supply-chain changes fell from 50% to 37% between 2023 and 2025, while use of additional inventory as a response dropped sharply.
Some businesses are therefore replacing temporary buffers with longer-term sourcing and market choices. Companies exposed beyond the EU continue to diversify suppliers and markets, while companies trading within the single market have reduced emergency adjustments more quickly. The report treats the single market itself as a source of resilience because businesses can alter sourcing and sales relationships without crossing another customs boundary.
Tariff expectations reinforce that shift. Among EU companies trading with the United States, 67% expect tariffs to remain a long-term obstacle, while 60% of those trading with China take the same view. Persistent cost or compliance burdens encourage changes to sourcing geography, supplier contracts, product design, inventory location, and customer pricing rather than another short-lived stock build.
A separate recent survey of supply-chain leaders found tariffs influencing inventory, sourcing, pricing, and promotional decisions rather than remaining a narrow customs issue. The EIB and Commission work broadens that picture across European businesses and shows how customs capability is becoming embedded in supply-chain design alongside procurement and logistics.
Self-reported preparedness still has limits. The survey measures companies’ own assessment rather than how long operations would survive a severe disruption or what financial loss would follow. Larger groups are more likely to have dedicated trade teams, multiple qualified suppliers, data infrastructure, and access to finance, while smaller businesses may depend on a narrower supplier base or external customs expertise.
Competitiveness pressures constrain how much redundancy companies can buy. The study says 74% of EU businesses identify rising costs as a threat to competitiveness and 61% cite uncertainty. Only 21% describe supply-chain resilience itself as a competitive advantage, compared with 78% citing product or service quality and 57% citing workforce skills.
Resilience investment is therefore competing for capital with technology, skills, capacity, and product development. Extra suppliers, duplicate tooling, additional inventory, and new compliance systems may reduce exposure, but they also carry measurable cost. Companies expecting stable or improving exports still have to decide which risks justify that expenditure and which can be managed contractually.
Nearly 90% of EU companies expect exports to remain stable or improve, although businesses exposed to the US and China are more cautious. That combination points towards continued redesign rather than wholesale retreat from international trade. Supplier optionality, customs data, tariff modelling, and market diversification become part of routine planning instead of temporary crisis measures.
The size gap is likely to remain one of the harder problems. Large companies can spread compliance costs across more transactions and maintain specialist teams; smaller importers and exporters face many of the same regulatory requirements with fewer people and less bargaining power. Shared customs services, better data, and more predictable rules can reduce that burden, but they do not remove it.
The survey’s clearest operational shift is the declining role of emergency stockpiling as the default answer to disruption. Companies are still managing risk, but the tools are moving upstream into sourcing and trade decisions. If tariffs and regulatory friction remain persistent, procurement strategy will increasingly be judged on where goods are bought and how easily those flows can be redirected, not simply on how much inventory is held.
