MERICS Forum: How can the EU navigate China's rare earths export controls

Beijing’s expanding export controls and practice of leveraging other actors’ dependencies pose a critical challenge to EU industry and could hinder efforts to strengthen its defense sector. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced the tightening of rare earths licensing in October, and the expansion of this policy to cover technologies used in rare earths processing. This signals that Beijing intends to restrict the ways in which the EU could mitigate its dependence. A joint G7 response is taking shape, but the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump won’t make Europe’s work any easier. The EU needs solutions both to address immediate shocks and to limit long-term dependence. Failure to act would be immensely costly and create a strategic liability. In this edition of MERICS Forum, Grzegorz Stec, Head of MERICS’ Brussels Office and Senior Analyst, asked several experts: How can the EU and its member states navigate China’s rare earths export restrictions?