The Commission has been actively raising with the Chinese authorities both at technical and political level its serious concerns on the impact of Chinese export control measures on the supply to the EU of rare earths and related products such as permanent magnets.
EU industry is reporting that the supply issues are creating risks of production stoppage for certain EU sectors, which highlights the critical nature of these materials for our industry and the need for the EU to find alternative sources of supply including from other trading partners.
The Commission has done extensive interviews with affected industry stakeholders in the EU. It has also reached out to existing producers in like-minded countries or through its Strategic Partnerships to inquire about possibly increasing capacity.
The EU has adopted the Critical Raw Materials Act[1] to secure supply in the long term. As laid down in the regulation, the Commission has published a first list of strategic projects[2], which will increase supply of strategic raw materials in the EU and decrease dependencies on third countries. Among the strategic projects, five address rare earth elements, one gallium, two germanium, two tungsten and ten graphite.
Under the Act, the Commission also works with Member States on gathering information on national strategic stocks and developing benchmarks for safe level of EU’s stocks for all strategic raw materials.
The Clean Industrial Deal[3] announced that by the fourth quarter 2026, the Commission will set up a dedicated EU Critical Raw Material Centre which could also perform additional task regarding securing EU supply of strategic raw materials.
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