Europe has identified the mines, processing plants and recycling projects it considers strategic. Twenty-three of them are now warning that financing, market access and permitting could put some at risk. Strategic autonomy, it turns out, requires more than a strategy.
London – Europe knows what it wants. It wants greater control over the raw materials required to manufacture batteries, semiconductors, electric vehicles, wind turbines, defence systems and many of the technologies on which its industrial future depends.
It also knows the problem.
For several critical raw materials, Europe remains heavily dependent on external suppliers — and particularly exposed to China at various stages of mining, processing and refining.
That vulnerability helped produce the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act.
The ambition is substantial. By 2030, the European Union wants domestic capacity capable of providing at least 10% of its annual consumption through extraction, 40% through processing and 25% through recycling. It also wants no more than 65% of annual consumption of each strategic raw material at any relevant processing stage to come from a single third country.
Those targets are meant to turn the language of “strategic autonomy” into industrial reality.
But between identifying a strategic resource and actually producing it lies a much more difficult question:
Who pays?
Sixty strategic projects
The European Commission has selected 60 Strategic Projects under the Critical Raw Materials Act: 47 located within the European Union and 13 in third countries.
They cover extraction, processing, recycling and substitution across materials essential to Europe’s industrial and technological ambitions.
The designation matters.
Strategic Projects can benefit from streamlined permitting procedures and support in gaining access to finance and potential buyers.
But there is an important distinction that can easily disappear behind the word “strategic”.
Being designated strategic does not mean being funded.
The Critical Raw Materials Act itself is not a giant European investment fund.
And now some of the companies behind those projects are warning that the gap matters.
Twenty-three projects raise the alarm
Twenty-three companies behind EU-designated Strategic Projects have joined an Urgent Call to Action, warning European institutions that some projects face immediate pressures involving liquidity, access to finance, market conditions and permitting.
That is not a marginal warning.
These are not speculative projects selected by an industry association and asking Brussels for recognition.
Europe itself has already decided that they are strategically important.
And yet being strategically important does not automatically make a project economically viable.
That contradiction goes to the heart of Europe’s industrial policy.
A mine can be necessary for European resilience and still struggle to attract investors.
A processing plant can be essential to the battery supply chain and still fail to secure enough customers.
A recycling facility can advance Europe’s environmental and strategic objectives and still be unable to raise sufficient capital.
Strategic necessity and commercial bankability are not the same thing.
The case of Viridian Lithium
One example illustrates the problem particularly well.
France’s Viridian Lithium planned a lithium conversion facility that aimed eventually to supply a significant share of Europe’s battery-grade lithium needs.
The project was selected as strategic by the European Commission.
Yet the company collapsed.
A former senior executive told Reuters that private investors had been waiting for stronger European financial commitment and that the absence of sufficient EU support contributed to the project’s failure.
Whatever the individual circumstances behind one company’s collapse, the broader question remains uncomfortable.
If Europe identifies a project as strategically important but the project disappears before entering production, what exactly has the strategic designation achieved?
Recognition is valuable. Permitting acceleration is valuable. Political support is valuable. But none of them can replace capital.
Europe already knows there is a financing gap
The problem is not entirely new to Brussels.
The European Commission itself has acknowledged that financing for critical raw materials remains fragmented.
Its policy response includes proposals for a dedicated financing hub and the mobilisation of additional resources through instruments including InvestEU and the Innovation Fund.
The European Investment Bank has reached an equally important conclusion.
According to an EIB study, European spending on mineral exploration would need to rise from roughly €200 million a year to around €2 billion annually for five years if Europe is serious about developing its domestic critical-material potential.
Ten times today’s level. That number tells us something important.
Europe’s critical-material challenge is not simply geological. Europe has resources. It has companies.
It has engineers. It has technology. It has environmental regulation. It has industrial demand.
What it does not yet have at sufficient scale is the complete financial ecosystem capable of turning all those ingredients into commercially sustainable projects.
The American comparison
The contrast with the United States is tempting.
Washington has increasingly treated critical minerals not merely as an industrial-policy issue but as a matter of national security.
Through grants, loans, procurement, defence programmes and other mechanisms, the United States has committed very substantial public resources to securing supply chains.
Recent estimates put American interventions connected with critical minerals at tens of billions of dollars.
European initiatives discussed in the same context are significantly smaller.
Those figures should not be compared mechanically: European and American programmes use different instruments, time horizons and accounting methodologies.
But the difference in philosophy deserves attention.
The United States increasingly appears willing to use the public balance sheet to make strategically important supply chains economically possible.
Europe has traditionally relied more heavily on regulation, market mechanisms and fragmented financial instruments.
The question is whether that model remains sufficient when raw materials themselves become geopolitical assets.
China changed the equation
For decades, globalisation encouraged companies to obtain materials wherever they could be produced most efficiently.
That model worked while supply chains were treated predominantly as economic systems.
They are no longer.
Export restrictions, geopolitical competition, industrial subsidies and technological rivalry have transformed minerals such as lithium, graphite, rare earths, nickel and cobalt into strategic assets.
A tonne of lithium is no longer simply a commodity. It’s part of the battery industry.
Rare earths are not merely minerals. They are inputs for electric motors, wind turbines, electronics and defence systems. Copper is not simply another metal.
It is one of the foundations of electrification, grids, data centres and the energy transition.
The distinction between industrial policy and national security is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
And Europe is discovering that strategic autonomy has a price.
The environmental dilemma
There is another contradiction Europe cannot avoid. Europe wants more domestic extraction and processing. It also has some of the world’s most ambitious environmental protections.
Industry argues that complex and lengthy permitting procedures can make European mining and processing projects difficult to develop.
Environmental organisations counter that weakening safeguards would not solve the structural financing and market problems facing the industry — while potentially imposing substantial environmental costs on local communities.
Both concerns matter. Europe cannot build strategic autonomy by abandoning the environmental standards that are themselves part of the European model.
But neither can it demand domestic supply chains while making almost every domestic industrial project impossible to deliver.
The challenge therefore is not: environment or industry. It’s: how do we build industry that can survive Europe’s environmental expectations?
That requires better permitting. Better technology.
Better community engagement. And, inevitably, more capital.
Greenland — and another European paradox
Europe is simultaneously strengthening its relationship with Greenland, where critical minerals are becoming increasingly important to geopolitical competition.
That makes strategic sense.
Diversification requires partnerships beyond the European Union.
But it also produces an intriguing question.
Before Europe searches ever farther away for the materials required for strategic autonomy, can it ensure that the projects it has already declared strategic actually survive?
The two objectives are not contradictory. Europe needs both domestic capacity and diversified international partnerships. But they expose the same underlying requirement: strategy must eventually become investment.
From AI to electric mobility
The consequences extend far beyond mining.
Almost every major technological ambition Europe currently discusses depends somewhere on critical raw materials.
Artificial intelligence requires data centres. Data centres require enormous quantities of electrical infrastructure. Electrical infrastructure requires copper and other materials.
Electric vehicles require batteries. Batteries require lithium, graphite, nickel and other minerals.
Wind turbines, advanced motors and defence technologies require rare earth elements.
Advanced air mobility and eVTOL aircraft will require sophisticated batteries, power electronics, lightweight materials and resilient supply chains.
Europe can write an AI strategy. A battery strategy. A defence strategy. A clean-tech strategy. A mobility strategy. A grid strategy.
But underneath all of them lies something much less glamorous: materials.
Without them, many European strategies remain PowerPoint presentations.
Strategic autonomy is not independence
There is also a conceptual mistake worth avoiding.
Europe will not become completely self-sufficient in critical raw materials.
Nor should that necessarily be the objective.
Geology alone makes complete independence unrealistic.
Strategic autonomy should instead mean resilience. Domestic production where possible. Recycling wherever viable. Diversified international suppliers. Strategic reserves where necessary.
Alternative materials where technology permits.
And enough industrial and financial capacity to prevent dependence on any single external actor from becoming a geopolitical vulnerability.
That is a much more realistic ambition. But it still requires money.
From strategy to reality
Europe has already completed the easiest part.
It has identified the problem. It has passed legislation. It has established targets. It has selected strategic projects. It has mapped vulnerabilities. Now comes the difficult part.
A project labelled “strategic” must still find investors. It must secure buyers.
It must obtain permits. It must survive commodity-price cycles.
It must compete against producers operating with different labour, environmental and energy costs.
And it must often do all this while competing with industries elsewhere that receive substantial state support.
Twenty-three projects asking Europe for urgent action are therefore more than an industry lobbying story.
They are a test.
A test of whether European strategic autonomy is primarily a political aspiration or an industrial commitment.
Because sovereignty is easy to declare. Resilience is easy to promise.
Strategic autonomy is easy to put into legislation. But mines must be built. Processing plants must operate. Recycling facilities must survive. Workers must be employed.
Investors must receive returns. And someone has to pay.
Europe has decided which raw materials are strategic.
It has decided which projects matter.
Now it faces the question that ultimately determines whether strategy becomes reality:
Europe wants strategic autonomy.
Who will pay for it?
Sources
European Commission — Critical Raw Materials Act and Strategic Projects, including the objectives for extraction, processing, recycling and diversification and the designation of 60 Strategic Projects.
European Commission — policy measures concerning financing for critical raw materials, InvestEU, the Innovation Fund and proposals for stronger coordination of European financing.
European Investment Bank — study on unlocking Europe’s critical raw materials potential, including the estimated increase in mineral-exploration investment required to meet European ambitions.
Reuters, 8 September 2026 — reporting on the 23 companies behind EU Strategic Projects calling for urgent action, financing and liquidity pressures and the Viridian Lithium case.
Reuters, September 2026 — reporting concerning European and US approaches to financing critical-mineral supply chains.
European Union / Greenland — recent cooperation and investment initiatives concerning strategic sectors and critical raw materials.
