Europe’s mineral strategy is a procurement fantasy

The European Union has announced plans to establish a central purchasing body for critical minerals, a move explicitly designed to prevent the United States from acquiring supplies "from under our noses," in the words of EU Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné. The proposal reflects a tense anxiety in Brussels, heightened after China recently imposed export controls on rare earths: a geopolitical shock that forced several EU automotive and defense lines into temporary shutdowns.

While ambitious, a closer examination of the strategy reveals a troubling gap between objectives and execution. While Brussels commits to stockpiling and "coordinating purchases," it offers remarkably little in the way of productive, supply-enabling investment in extractive countries themselves. By focusing on buying rather than building, the EU risks becoming a passive consumer in a market once again defined by active industrial policy.

Benchmarks vs. incentives

To understand why the EU’s approach is falling short, one must look at the mechanics of its policy compared to its competitors. The Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), the cornerstone of Brussels’ strategy, sets voluntary "benchmarks" for 2030: 10% of annual consumption from domestic extraction, 40% from processing, and 25% from recycling. It also designates a series of "strategic projects" that will benefit from faster permitting.

However, these are internal targets, not external financing mechanisms. The CRMA lacks the fiscal firepower to compel investment abroad. Contrast this with the United States' Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which does not merely set targets but fundamentally reshapes the market through tax credits. By restricting subsidies to vehicles whose minerals are extracted or processed in the US or Free Trade Agreement (FTA) countries, the US has effectively created a premium market for "friendly" minerals. This policy actively drives private capital into mining projects in places like Canada, Australia, and potentially select African partners, because the return on investment is underwritten by US tax policy. The EU has no comparable mechanism to de-risk investment in the Global South. While the US IRA provides a direct financial guarantee (a stable, premium market price), which helps overcome the political and logistical risks of building expensive new projects, the EU’s CRMA, in contrast, offers only streamlined bureaucracy, which lacks support for the fundamental financial challenges in developing new supply chains in the Global South.

The Zambian gap

The consequences of this policy divergence are illustrated by Zambia, with which the EU signed a strategic partnership in 2023. Zambia possesses significant copper reserves and has an official national target to triple production to 3 million metric tonnes by the early 2030s. The country is critical to Europe’s industrial future; copper is the nervous system of the energy transition, and Zambia represents one of the few large-scale sources of supply not yet fully dominated by Chinese incumbents.

But Zambia faces a lethal structural constraint: energy. Mining consumes more than half of the country’s electricity, and the grid relies on hydropower for nearly 85% of its supply. This leaves the sector critically vulnerable to drought, a reality that hit home in 2024 when severe shortages forced mines to import expensive power from South Africa and Tanzania just to keep the lights on. Under current energy conditions, analysts project Zambia will produce only 1.7 million metric tonnes by 2031, barely half the government's target.

The logical European response would be direct investment in diversifying Zambia’s energy infrastructure: solar capacity, wind farms, and grid modernization. Such investment would unlock the copper Europe needs while lowering the carbon intensity of production. Instead, the EU has created a buying mechanism.

The investment reality: Who is actually building?

Meanwhile, other states are pouring concrete. The investment landscape in Africa is being reshaped by actors who understand that security of supply requires owning the means of production.

China remains the dominant force, not just through procurement but through deep equity stakes and infrastructure. In the first half of 2025 alone, China’s energy-related engagement in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries reached $42 billion, with massive capital flows into mining and processing. Chinese firms are buying the ore, building the roads, the power plants, and the processing facilities that make extraction possible.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has also entered the fray with a speed that Brussels cannot match. In early 2024, the UAE’s International Holding Company (IHC) acquired a 51% stake in Zambia’s Mopani Copper Mines for $1.1 billion. This was not a passive investment, but a capital injection designed to expand production and secure long-term offtake. Similarly, UAE firms are investing in logistics infrastructure in Angola and Tanzania to move these minerals to market.

Other "Western" success stories often highlight the EU's absence. The Lobito Corridor — a railway project connecting the mineral-rich DRC and Zambia to the Atlantic port of Lobito in Angola — is frequently cited as a win. Yet the heavy lifting is being done by a consortium involving Trafigura, backed mostly by significant US financial support. If successful, the railway will cut transport times from weeks to days, effectively lowering the "cut-off grade" for copper and making previously uneconomic deposits viable. This is what supply-enabling investment looks like.

Collateral damage in the Global South

The EU’s focus on "catching up" through procurement rather than development carries a darker risk: it accelerates extraction pressure without strengthening governance or environmental safeguards.

When three economic superpowers — the US, China, and the EU — compete for the same finite resources, the price for extraction countries does not necessarily increase; the pressure does. More mines get approved faster. Environmental impact assessments risk being "streamlined.”

We are seeing the first warning signs – in February 2025, the Sino-Metals tailings dam disaster in Zambia released millions of liters of acidic waste into the Kafue River ecosystem. The disaster, occurring at a Chinese-owned facility, highlighted the dangers of prioritizing output over safety. The EU criticizes China for such lax standards, yet by entering the market purely as a hungry buyer, Europe incentivizes exactly this kind of corner-cutting. If the EU demands millions of tons of copper but refuses to invest in the modern, safe infrastructure required to extract it, it becomes complicit in the environmental degradation that follows.

Furthermore, the EU’s Global Gateway initiative, billed as the democratic alternative to the Belt and Road, has been criticized for being slow and misaligned. While it promises €300 billion, a disproportionate amount is earmarked for transport corridors that facilitate export, rather than the energy and social infrastructure required for local development. Less than 10% of effectively mobilized funds target the deep education and research capacity Africa needs to move up the value chain. 

A resource grab with better PR?

The EU frames its mineral strategy as a moral imperative: reducing dependence on China and promoting "trusted partnerships." From the perspective of mineral-producing countries, though, this looks increasingly like a traditional resource competition between wealthy powers, with Africa caught in the middle.

African stakeholders increasingly perceive that Chinese and Indian companies better recognize the continent's market potential, while European firms focus predominantly on extracting value for European markets. The UAE and China offer cash, infrastructure, and speed. The US offers tax credits and security guarantees. The EU offers a "purchasing body" and a paperwork headache.

If Europe genuinely seeks diversified, reliable supply chains, it must move beyond a procurement fantasy, because "strategic autonomy" is built, not bought.

This requires financing the infrastructure that makes large-scale extraction economically viable and socially sustainable. It means replicating the Lobito Corridor model across the continent, but with a focus on energy and water as much as transport. Investment in Zambian solar capacity would stabilize the grid, lower the cost of mining, and create a genuine "value-add" for the local economy that builds lasting diplomatic goodwill.

Without investment in the productive capacity of partner countries, the EU risks falling further behind. Its mineral future depends not on how much it can stockpile, but on whether it is willing to invest in the systems that make the minerals available in the first place. 

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