Europe finds itself at a turning point. As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared at the 2025 Berlin Global Dialogue, the tightening of export controls by China on rare earths and battery materials presents a “structural challenge” to supply chains and industrial competitiveness.
The launch of RESourceEU offers an opportunity, but only if it does more than serve as another implementation vehicle for the CRMA. Europe must shift from procedural reform to industrial strategy. To this end, we offer a blueprint for how RESourceEU must deliver:
- Review and reform the acquis
Europe must address bottlenecks in permitting, energy pricing, access to finance and state-aid frameworks, turning these from constraints into enablers of investment. As President von der Leyen remarked: “Our response must match the scale of the risks we face … Europe cannot do things the same way any more.”
- Move beyond the REPowerEU template
While the REPowerEU experience offers lessons, raw-materials markets are fundamentally different from energy markets. RESourceEU must recognise the global, fungible and interconnected nature of raw-material supply chains rather than adopting cookie-cutter solutions like central procurement or stockpiles alone.
- Connect supply, demand and value
Competitiveness is not a policy, but the result of integrated policy. Europe needs:
- Accelerated development of strategic extraction and processing facilities (low-energy cost, low-friction permitting).
- Standards-based markets supported by targeted state aid or price-support mechanisms, tailored to each material’s market structure.
- Supply-chain clustering, domestic value capture and industrial ecosystems tied to clean-tech and defence deployment.
- Recognise value – not just cost
For too long, Europe has externalised the costs of raw-material extraction while retaining only the downstream value. That model is no longer fit for purpose. The time has come to invest in value creation, not simply cost minimisation.
In her speech, President von der Leyen provided the political backing: “The aim is to secure access to alternative sources of critical raw materials in the short, medium and long term for our European industry … We will boost investment in strategic projects for the production and processing of critical raw materials here in the European Union.”
For RESourceEU to succeed, we must start with a clear diagnosis and root-and-branch policy reform before layering instruments. Let’s fix the foundations: streamline permitting, reduce energy cost burdens, unlock finance and markets, so that Europe’s raw-materials industry can truly deliver on its promise.