Von der Leyen stressed that these actions would “severely hamper other countries except China, from developing a rare earth industry, and this threatens the stability of global supply chains and will have a direct impact on European companies.”
“If you consider that over 90 percent of our consumption of rare earth magnets come from imports from China, you see the risks here for Europe and its most strategic industrial sectors, from automotives to industrial motors dependence to aerospace defence, and aerospace or AI chips and data centres,” the European leader said.
Von der Leyen said “the aim is to create alternative sources of critical raw materials in the short, medium, and long-term for our European industries.”
“We’ll speed work on critical raw material partnerships with countries like Ukraine and Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Chile, and Greenland. Europe cannot do things the same way anymore. We learned this lesson painfully with energy, we will not repeat it with critical materials,” she said.