New EU mineral strategy swaps green goals for military readiness

For years, the European Union has couched its resource diplomacy in the language of the green energy transition — solar panels, wind turbines, and climate goals. Brussels’ latest attempt to secure the critical raw materials needed for the EU’s future, an action plan dubbed REsourceEU, indicates a distinct shift in tone from previous language that has put clean energy and the green transition at the center of the bloc’s critical minerals strategy. “The immediate focus is to boost the value chains for rare earths permanent magnets, battery raw materials and defence-related raw materials, given their strategic dimension for Europe’s competitiveness, transition and defence readiness objectives,” the plan states. The plan, adopted by the European Commission on Dec. 3, seeks to set up a European Critical Raw Materials Centre to collect market intelligence, decide on next moves, and develop financial tools early next year. But experts are concerned that while the plan’s legal framework — the Critical Raw Materials Act, or CRMA — ties critical minerals to clean energy deployment, climate targets, electrification and net-zero goals, the plan itself reads more like a geopolitical signal focused on economic security and geopolitics — highlighting defense, autonomy, and industrial competitiveness —- that is meant to show China and the United States that the EU is in the big leagues on critical minerals, experts tell Devex. “It’s just saying ‘we need minerals and we need to get ahead of China,’” said Alison Doig, a climate and energy analyst who has tracked multilateral engagement on minerals, of the plan. “It’s about electronics, it’s about the military, it’s about defense. It doesn’t mention energy and while it mentions batteries, it doesn’t in the context of the green transition.” Critical minerals are a group of metals and materials — such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper — that are the backbone of clean energy technologies, powering everything from solar panels and wind turbines to electric vehicles, batteries, and electricity grids. They not only underpin the global transition to cleaner energy but are also increasingly shaping development pathways: influencing trade, industrial policy, job creation, and geopolitical leverage. Countries that can extract, process, or move up the value chain in critical minerals stand to gain revenue, infrastructure, and strategic relevance, while those locked into raw extraction risk repeating old patterns of resource dependence. How critical minerals are financed, governed, and shared will therefore play a decisive role in whether the clean energy transition accelerates inclusive development — or deepens existing inequalities. The EU formally adopted the CRMA in 2024, setting a legal framework to secure a sustainable and resilient supply of these materials across the EU. This has involved a series of memorandums of understanding, largely with low- and middle-income countries, which hold a significant amount of the world’s critical raw materials. This includes the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, and Uzbekistan, among others. The framework also aims to diversify the EU’s supplies to reduce overdependency on a small number of source countries, which was made especially clear when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cut off the EU’s access to Russian gas. A lopsided offer? The new RESourceEU action plan is meant to build on and operationalize the CRMA by mobilizing €3 billion ($3.5 billion) over the next year. “The RESourceEU Action Plan is about accelerating the achievement of the objectives of the Critical Raw Materials Act, thus secure and diversity access to raw materials for the EU industry,” a European Commission spokesperson told Devex. “The Action Plan sets measures to preserve and expand EU production of primary and secondary CRMs [critical raw materials], strengthen the EU’s resilience against supply disruptions and chart a path towards a faster diversification of CRMs supply chains. A key role is played in measures to support circularity, recycling and innovation.” They also said the plan contributes to the commission’s “twin transition objectives, including of course the climate and energy transition.” Missing from this plan is anything these mineral-rich nations actually want, such as financing for skills development and training and support for monitoring mechanisms to ensure high environmental, social, and governance standards, according to Susannah Fitzgerald, governance officer at the Natural Resource Governance Institute. While there are some references to adding “local value” in the plan, “there’s little detail on what that would actually look like,” she said. “The framings are about this broad geopolitics and about China and competition. But by taking that approach, they’re not really thinking about what their actual offer is and what makes them an interesting partner for the kinds of countries that have the minerals.” By contrast, a nonbinding United Nations resolution agreed last week at the sevent session of the U.N. Environment Assembly, or UNEA-7, framed critical minerals as essential to the clean energy transition and pushed human rights and environmental accountability. Financial mismatch While the EU’s headline figure of €3 billion to support these initiatives is significant for the EU, it pales in comparison to the competition. China invested $16.3 billion in geological exploration in 2024, its fourth consecutive annual increase. “The scale of what is going on is huge,” Fitzgerald said. “If I was an EU official, I’d be thinking, ‘What makes us an interesting partner?’” Developing nations are being courted by multiple blocs. If the EU cannot compete on raw cash, its traditional selling point has been high standards, strong regulatory frameworks, and accountability, she said. However, experts argue that REsourceEU paradoxically retreats from these strengths in a bid to move faster. “Partner countries in the global south have been quite vocal about the kind of support they are looking for,” Fitzgerald explained, referencing the added training, value, and monitoring needed for the supply chains to stay responsible and sustainable. For decades, resource-rich nations in Africa, Latin America, and Asia have served as raw suppliers — extracting minerals and shipping them abroad, while the profitable processing and manufacturing happen elsewhere. Many mineral-rich countries are increasingly demanding a “green industrial strategy” that keeps processing jobs and economic benefits in-country. “They’re just looking to grab as much as they can rather than finding a different way around,” Doig noted. “What’s on offer is an extractive deal.” “Financing seems to be the main headline takeaway from the Action Plan as a whole, and of course at the end of the day, money talks,” Fitzgerald said. “But it doesn’t seem like they’re quite speaking the same language that partners want to hear.” A ‘false economy’ “One big mega thing missing from any of this is any kind of due diligence,” said Doig of the plan. “There’s no environmental social safeguarding or human rights awareness.” Just last year, the EU passed the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, or CSDDD, a law designed to make big companies legally responsible for addressing human rights and environmental impacts in their operations. But REsourceEU does not explicitly link its financing to these high standards. Experts warn this is a strategic error. The environmental harms of critical minerals mining are well-documented. Lithium mining has been linked to health issues, water scarcity, and a decline in quality of life across Brazil. In the DRC, cobalt mining has been associated with hazardous working conditions and child labor. And across the world, nickel and copper operations have polluted freshwater and soil with toxic waste, leading to health problems such as respiratory and kidney diseases in nearby populations. These harms not only hurt people but also undermine the economic sustainability of the supply chain. Fitzgerald described the critical minerals rush as a “false economy.” Speeding up mining permits by bypassing social and environmental safeguards often leads to protests, strikes, and legal challenges that stall projects indefinitely, A prime example is the recent suspension of a major lithium project in Serbia, which faced massive local opposition despite being hailed as a strategic win for Europe. “Responsible is reliable,” Fitzgerald added. “If the EU isn’t doing proper due diligence on projects, what is to say the same won’t happen again?” The commission told Devex that issues of due diligence and environmental protection are covered in the Critical Raw Materials Act, and the plan is just meant to outline its implementation. “While the RESourceEU Action Plan is a Communication indicating a set of actions to accelerate the EU diversification efforts to secure raw materials in the EU and ensure resilience of our supply chains, the Critical Raw Materials Act is the legal framework ensuring the sustainability dimension of the EU policy on raw materials,” a European Commission spokesperson said. They also said that the commission “ensures respect of environmental, social and human rights on projects concerning raw materials inside and outside the EU through the Critical Raw Materials Act.” But experts are still concerned that the language could indicate a shift in priorities. “When we see more security arguments coming into things, that’s when you are at risk of standards slipping,” Fitzgerald warned. The EU is currently in discussions with South Africa and Brazil regarding partnerships, and the success of REsourceEU will likely depend on whether these bilateral agreements can offer more than the framework itself suggests.