The European Union is becoming increasingly dependent on the Arctic for its climate transition and defence goals and the bloc should mobilise efforts to use its own critical raw materials in the far North to cut dependencies on China, according to a European Commission official.
Speaking at an event on the EU’s Arctic strategy on Tuesday, the bloc’s special envoy for Arctic affairs, Jyrki Katainen, argued that the war in Ukraine, China’s growing influence and changing US policy had fundamentally altered the region's geopolitical and economic importance.
"We are becoming increasingly dependent on the Arctic, economically and militarily. The Arctic region provides us with a wide range of critical raw materials, which we have been importing, largely from China," Katainen told an audience in Brussels.
"We have understood that this is not sustainable anymore. We have to utilise our own resources."
The EU is particularly interested in rare earth metals, which are crucial for the manufacturing of clean and defence technologies like solar panels or batteries and where it remains almost entirely dependent on China.
