Electric dependency: what strategies for the EU?

Sought after by the indus­tri­al and defence sec­tors, rare earths have become essen­tial indus­tri­al com­pon­ents. Once pro­cessed, they pos­sess mag­net­ic or optic­al prop­er­ties neces­sary for the man­u­fac­ture of screens, elec­tric vehicles, wind tur­bines, fight­er jets and all cut­ting-edge tech­no­logy. In Octo­ber 2025, Beijing intro­duced new restric­tions on the export of rare earths and “reformed the export licens­ing regime, a decision that exposes import­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers to uncer­tainty regard­ing prices and avail­able volumes,” explains Gilles Lepes­ant, research dir­ect­or at the CNRS. Facing con­sid­er­able chal­lenges, the European Uni­on must adapt to this new situ­ation whilst demand con­tin­ues to grow.

Since the 1970s, China has gradu­ally estab­lished itself as the dom­in­ant force in the pro­duc­tion chain, from the extrac­tion to the refin­ing of rare earths. “Although they are not actu­ally that rare, since they are found across large parts of the Earth’s crust, it is nev­er­the­less Beijing that con­trols almost the entire glob­al sup­ply of rare earths, account­ing for around 83% of world pro­duc­tion ¹,” points out Gilles Lepes­ant. Giv­en the expert­ise required to sep­ar­ate and refine rare earths, the chal­lenge is in fact a tech­no­lo­gic­al one rather than a geo­lo­gic­al one.

Today, China no longer hides the fact that it uses this lever­age as a dip­lo­mat­ic tool to settle its dis­putes. Tokyo recently felt the brunt of this. When Prime Min­is­ter San­ae Takai­chi raised the pos­sib­il­ity of Japan’s involve­ment in the event of a con­flict over Taiwan, Beijing respon­ded by block­ing exports of “dual-use goods”, includ­ing rare earths, to its Japan­ese neigh­bour on 6^th Janu­ary 2026. On 4^th Feb­ru­ary 2026, Wash­ing­ton, Brus­sels and Tokyo joined forces, des­pite under­ly­ing ten­sions, to counter China’s strangle­hold. A stra­tegic part­ner­ship was formed to secure each country’s sup­plies of crit­ic­al min­er­als. The part­ner­ship plans to set min­im­um prices in a coordin­ated man­ner. At the same time, the White House announced a new stock­pil­ing strategy backed by a $12 bil­lion fund.

As recent news reminds us, Green­land is the focus of intense interest. Accord­ing to a study by the Geo­lo­gic­al Sur­vey of Den­mark and Green­land pub­lished in 2023, 23 of the 24 crit­ic­al raw mater­i­als (as defined by the European Com­mis­sion) are present in this ter­rit­ory, which is said to hold 36 mil­lion tonnes of rare earths. How­ever, only 1.5 mil­lion tonnes are believed to be exploit­able. Two mines are cur­rently act­ive on the island, one for the extrac­tion of anorthos­ite, the oth­er for gold. As for rare earths, two prom­ising depos­its have caught the atten­tion of major powers: Kvane­fjeld (the world’s fifth-largest urani­um depos­it and second largest for rare earths) and Krin­glerne. Gilles Lepes­ant points out, how­ever, that for the moment “these two pro­jects, the only ones sub­mit­ted to the author­it­ies, have not received min­ing permits”.

He adds that strong loc­al oppos­i­tion per­sists, whilst the pre­cise com­pos­i­tion of the depos­its remains uncer­tain. On the ground, everything needed for the devel­op­ment of min­ing activ­it­ies is lack­ing: a suit­able cli­mate, infra­struc­ture, labour (few­er than 60,000 inhab­it­ants), cap­it­al and pub­lic sup­port. It is also worth not­ing the hypo­thet­ic­al pres­ence of fossil fuels. Indeed, 13% of undis­covered oil and 30% of undis­covered nat­ur­al gas could be found in the Arc­tic, and in par­tic­u­lar in Green­land (USGS). Loc­al author­it­ies have, how­ever, banned oil explor­a­tion since 2021.

Once a min­ing power­house in the 19^th Cen­tury, Europe is now heav­ily depend­ent on its part­ners for almost all metals. “To achieve its energy trans­ition, the EU relies on imports for between 75% and 100% of its sup­ply, depend­ing on the met­al,” explains Gilles Lepes­ant. In early Feb­ru­ary, the European Court of Aud­it­ors high­lighted new fig­ures under­scor­ing the EU’s depend­ence on Beijing: 97% of mag­nesi­um, 71% of gal­li­um, 44% of bar­ite and 31% of tung­sten used in Europe come from China. This depend­ence is all the more wor­ry­ing as demand is skyrock­et­ing. “Demand for lith­i­um – a key com­pon­ent of elec­tric vehicle bat­ter­ies – is expec­ted to increase 18-fold by 2030 and 60-fold by 2050. Demand for rare earths is also expec­ted to grow sharply.” European man­u­fac­tur­ers find them­selves on the front line facing two major risks: a dis­rup­tion in sup­ply (which could arise due to polit­ic­al dead­locks, social unrest or cli­mate-related con­straints in pro­du­cing coun­tries) and high price volatility.

To reduce its depend­ence on sup­pli­ers, the European Com­mis­sion adop­ted the RESourceEU plan in Decem­ber 2025. It is now up to the Mem­ber States and the European Par­lia­ment to turn the pro­pos­als it con­tains into action in the com­ing months. This plan has the poten­tial to bring about a paradigm shift. Accord­ing to Gilles Lepes­ant, the pro­posed roadmap sug­gests that “price should no longer be the sole cri­terion taken into account in pub­lic pro­cure­ment. The Com­mis­sion strongly encour­ages Mem­ber States to place great­er emphas­is on secur­ity of sup­ply, even if this means turn­ing away from the sup­pli­er offer­ing the low­est price,” with a view to pri­or­it­ising products sourced from with­in Europe. Like oth­er major powers (such as the United States, China, Japan and South Korea), the European Uni­on should also adopt a com­mon stor­age strategy.

Clearly, there are few act­ive mines, and the chances of open­ing new ones are slim. “Geo­lo­gic­ally speak­ing, the European Uni­on is not in a strong pos­i­tion; nev­er­the­less, it can be so tech­no­lo­gic­ally. Refin­ing and, above all, recyc­ling are prom­ising aven­ues,” accord­ing to Gilles Lepes­ant. By 2030, the EU aims to extract 10% of the metals it needs from its own soil, refine 40% of them and use 25% recycled mater­i­als. To achieve this, Brus­sels is con­sid­er­ing clas­si­fy­ing cer­tain metals as “haz­ard­ous waste” to ban their export. At present, “a sig­ni­fic­ant quant­ity of metals, led by cop­per, is sent to China or Tur­key only to return to Europe in the form of fin­ished products. The aim is to keep some of the waste with­in the European Uni­on to boost the recyc­ling sec­tors, which are already act­ive in Bel­gi­um, Fin­land and France”. As for refin­ing, which is mainly car­ried out in China, it is con­ceiv­able that metals extrac­ted in Africa, Asia or Lat­in Amer­ica could be refined in Europe.

Des­pite the stated ambi­tions, sev­er­al obstacles remain. Fin­an­cially speak­ing, the announced budgets, although on the rise, remain mod­est com­pared to the resources deployed by Wash­ing­ton or Beijing.  Fur­ther­more, whilst the EU’s stated goal of sourcing 10% of its met­al require­ments from with­in its bor­ders by 2030 is mod­est, it faces res­ist­ance from loc­al com­munit­ies. “The European Com­mis­sion sug­gests revis­ing cer­tain envir­on­ment­al stand­ards, but it will be dif­fi­cult to over­come the reluct­ance of loc­al res­id­ents. A case in point is Rio Tin­to’s lith­i­um mine pro­ject in Ser­bia, which has been under con­sid­er­a­tion for sev­er­al years and remains at a stand­still to this day.” Finally, whilst tar­gets are set at European level, Mem­ber States retain the final say on the grant­ing of min­ing permits.

As for man­u­fac­tur­ers, sev­er­al sec­tors, not­ably the auto­mot­ive industry, have only recently become aware of their vul­ner­ab­il­ity. “Secur­ing sup­ply chains has become a major chal­lenge, but the ‘made in Europe’ label will only gain trac­tion if European sup­ply is com­pet­it­ive,” con­cludes Gilles Lepesant. 

Alicia Piveteau