Keit Pentus-Rosimannus / Feb 2026
Image: Shutterstock
In a geopolitically tense world, dependency has become a hot topic. As the EU decouples itself from Russian gas and strengthens its defence and digital capabilities, it must tackle the risks that come with building a self-sufficient future.
As things stand, the EU is dependent on other countries for most of the critical raw materials it needs for its green, digital, defence and aerospace sectors. Without strategically important materials such as lithium and rare earths, there will be no strategic autonomy, and any talk of competitiveness will ring hollow.
The European Court of Auditors has just published a report on the critical materials needed for the energy transition. Although the focus is on renewables, the lessons also apply to other sectors. The report shows that for the 26 materials we need for wind turbines, batteries, solar panels and other green technologies, we are fully dependent on imports for 10 of them. The situation isn’t much better for many other materials. This makes us vulnerable and discredits our goal to be a strong, independent geopolitical power, particularly if any of our trading partners decide to weaponise our dependency.
To make supplies more secure, the EU can do three things: diversify imports, step up domestic production, and reuse, recycle and substitute materials. What we found is that on all three fronts, things are difficult.
To avoid having to rely on a handful of suppliers, the EU is encouraging more diverse imports of critical raw materials, mainly via free trade agreements and strategic partnerships. Such tools improve cooperation with third countries and conditions on the ground, but there is little direct impact on supplies. For strategic raw materials partnership countries, imported volumes have actually fallen for half the number of materials since 2020. Even if the EU does everything right, trade distortions and geopolitical crises can still make it difficult to access the necessary materials.
Increasing domestic production is not straightforward either, for financial, legal and administrative reasons. The EU’s mining sector has been underdeveloped for decades, and lacks sufficient capacity to explore deposits. Almost all processing of critical raw materials takes place outside the EU, and for the small number of materials that are processed in Europe, the number of facilities is going down, not up. It is still difficult to secure funding for any activities that produce critical raw materials, although things are improving. And even if projects do go ahead, they can take a very long time, partly due to complex permit procedures. In the EU, it can take up to 30 years to open a mine – meaning that if a strategically important mining project starts today, it will become operational only in 2056.
There is major – albeit currently untapped – potential in recycling, reuse and substitution. Ten of the critical materials that we need for the energy transition are currently not recycled at all, and most existing EU targets do not incentivise the recycling of specific, individual materials. High processing costs, scarcity of materials, and technical and regulatory issues also make the EU’s recycling sector less competitive.
In the Critical Raw Materials Act, the EU introduced the concept of strategic projects to contribute to the three objectives I cited above: diversification, domestic production, and circularity. These projects will benefit from faster permits and more visibility, but do not yet come with any EU money attached. As things stand, this means that the projects remain strategic in name only. There have been two calls for projects so far, but many are unlikely to provide supplies by 2030.
The EU is aware of the risks involved, and has taken important steps in recent years to secure supplies of critical materials, including the Critical Raw Materials Act and the recent ResourceEU Action Plan. But in a challenging global environment, the EU has to up its game. It must make strategic partnerships deliver, unleash the potential of recycling, and ensure that strategic projects provide supplies for EU industry, rather than for our competitors.
