Donald Trump’s drive to secure peace in Ukraine must not let Vladimir Putin off the hook for war crimes committed by Russian forces, a top EU official has warned, effectively setting a new red line for a deal.  In an interview with POLITICO, Michael McGrath, the European commissioner for justice and democracy, said negotiators must ensure the push for a ceasefire does not result in Russia escaping prosecution.  His comments reflect concerns widely held in European capitals that the original American blueprint for a deal included the promise of a “full amnesty for actions committed during the war,” alongside plans to reintegrate Russia into the world economy. The Trump team’s push to rehabilitate the Kremlin chief comes despite international condemnation of Russia for alleged crimes including the abduction of 20,000 Ukrainian children and attacks targeting civilians in Bucha, Mariupol and elsewhere.  “I don’t think history will judge kindly any effort to wipe the slate clean for Russian crimes in Ukraine,” McGrath said. “They must be held accountable for those crimes and that will be the approach of the European Union in all of these discussions. “Were we to do so, to allow for impunity for those crimes, we would be sowing the seeds of the next round of aggression and the next invasion,” he added. “And I believe that that would be a historic mistake of huge proportions.” Protesters in London, June 2025. There has been international condemnation of Russia for alleged crimes including the abduction of 20,000 Ukrainian children and attacks targeting civilians. | Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Ukrainian authorities say they have opened investigations into more than 178,000 alleged Russian crimes since the start of the war. Last month, a United Nations commission found Russian authorities had committed crimes against humanity in targeting Ukrainian residents through drone attacks, and the war crimes of forcible transfer and deportation of civilians.  “We cannot give up on the rights of the victims of Russian aggression and Russian crimes,” McGrath said. “Millions of lives have been taken or destroyed, and people forcibly removed, and we have ample evidence.”  The EU and others have worked to set up a new special tribunal for the crime of aggression with the aim of bringing Russian leaders to justice for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022. In March 2023, judges at the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin, naming him “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population [children]” from Ukraine. But Trump and his team have so far shown little interest in prosecuting Putin. In fact, the U.S. president has consistently described his Russian counterpart in positive terms, often talking about how he is able to have a “good conversation” with Putin. Trump has expressed the hope of building new economic and energy partnerships with Russia, and the pair have even discussed organizing ice hockey matches in Russia and the U.S. once the war is over.   The draft 28-point peace plan that Trump’s team circulated last week continues in a similar vein.  It states that “Russia will be reintegrated into the global economy” and invited to rejoin the G8 after being expelled in 2014 following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. “The United States will enter into a long-term economic cooperation agreement for mutual development in the areas of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centers, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities,” the document said. The U.S. peace plan proposes to lift sanctions against Russia in stages, though European leaders have pushed back to emphasize that the removal of EU sanctions will be for them to decide. Not everyone in Europe wants to maintain the squeeze on Moscow, however. Hungary has repeatedly stalled new sanctions, especially on oil and gas, for which it relies on Russia. Senior politicians in Germany, too, have floated the idea of lifting sanctions on the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia. 

BRUSSELS — When the colonial governments of Belgium and Portugal ordered the construction of a railway connecting oil- and mineral-rich regions in the African interior to the Atlantic, their primary objective was to plunder resources such as rubber, ivory and minerals for export to Western countries.  Today, that same stretch of railway infrastructure, snaking through Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola to the port of Lobito, is being modernized and extended with U.S. and EU money to facilitate the transport of sought-after minerals like cobalt and copper. Just this month, Jozef Síkela, the EU commissioner for international partnerships, signed a €116 million investment package for the corridor, often hailed as a model initiative under Global Gateway, the bloc’s infrastructure development program. This time around, however, Brussels says it’s committed to resetting its historically tainted relationship with the region — a message European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa will stress when they address African and EU leaders at a Nov. 24-25 summit in Luanda, Angola, which is this year celebrating 50 years of independence from Portuguese rule.  “Global Gateway is about mutual benefits,” von der Leyen said in a keynote speech in October. The program should “focus even more on key value chains,” including the metals and minerals needed in everything from smartphones to wind turbines and defense applications.  The aim, she said, is to “build up resilient value chains together. With local infrastructure, but also local jobs, local skills and local industries.”  Yet Brussels is scrambling to enter a region only to find that China got there first. Batches of copper sheets are stored in a warehouse and wait to be loaded on trucks in Zambia. | Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images African countries are already the primary suppliers of minerals to Beijing, which has secured access to their resource wealth — unhindered by any historical baggage of colonial exploitation — and is now the world’s dominant processor. Europe’s emphasis on retaining economic value in host countries — rather than merely extracting resources for export — answers calls by African leaders for a more equitable and sustainable approach to developing their countries’ natural resources.  “The EU has been quite vocal, since the beginning of the raw minerals diplomacy two years ago, saying: We want to be the ethical partner,” said Martina Matarazzo, international and EU advocacy coordinator at Resource Matters, a Belgian NGO focusing on resource extraction, which also has an office in Kinshasa, DRC.  But “there is a big gap” between what’s being said and what’s being done, she added, pointing out that it is still unclear how the Lobito Corridor can be a “win-win” project, rather than just facilitating the shipping of minerals abroad.  Brussels finds itself under growing pressure to diversify its supply chains of lithium, rare earths and other raw materials away from China — which has demonstrated time and again it is ready to weaponize its market dominance. To that end, it is drafting a new plan, due on Dec. 3, to accelerate the bloc’s diversification efforts.   In African countries, however, Brussels is still struggling to establish itself as an attractive, ethical alternative to Beijing, which has long secured vast access to the continent’s resources through large-scale investments in mining, processing and infrastructure.  To enter the minerals space, the EU needs to walk the talk in close cooperation with African leaders — doing so may be its only chance to secure resources while moving away from its extractivist past, POLITICO has found in conversations with researchers, policymakers and civil society.  RESOURCE RUSH Appetite for Africa’s vast natural riches first drew colonizers to the continent — and laid “the foundation for post-independence resource dependency and external interference,” according to the Africa Policy Research Institute. Now, the continent’s deposits of vital minerals have turned it into a strategic player, with Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema last year setting a goal of tripling copper output by the end of the decade, for instance. Beijing has often used Belt and Road, its international development initiative, to secure mining rights in exchange for infrastructure projects. Washington, which lags far behind Beijing, is also stepping up its game, with investments into Africa quietly overtaking China’s. President Donald Trump has extended the U.S. security umbrella to war-torn areas in exchange for access to resources, for example brokering a — shaky — peace deal between Rwanda and the DRC. EU companies are “really trying to catch up,” said Christian Géraud Neema Byamungu, an expert on China-Africa relations and the Francophone Africa editor of the China Global South Project. “They left Africa when there was a sense that Africa is not really a place to do business.” DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY Against this backdrop, the key question for the EU is: What can it offer to set itself apart from other partners? On paper, the answer is clear: a responsible approach to resource extraction that prioritizes creating local economic value, along with high environmental and social standards.  “We want to focus on the sustainable development of value chains and how to work with our African partners to support their rise of the value chains,” said an EU official ahead of the Luanda summit, where minerals will be a key topic. “This is not about extraction only,” they added. But so far, that still has to translate into a concrete impact on the ground. “We are not at the point where we can see how really the EU is trying to change things on the ground in terms of value addition in DRC,” said Emmanuel Umpula Nkumba, executive director of NGO Afrewatch. “I am not naïve, they are coming to make money, not to help us,” he added.  Not only has offtake from the Lobito Corridor been slow, but the project has also come under fire for prioritizing Western interests over African development and agency, and for potentially leading to the destruction of local forests, community displacement and an overall lack of benefits for local populations.  The 2024 Lobito Corridor Trans-Africa Summit | Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images The EU, however, views the corridor as “a symbol of the partnership between the African and European continent and an example of our shared investment agenda,” according to a Commission spokesperson, who called it “a lifeline towards sustainable development and shared prosperity.” Finally, while “value addition” has become a catchphrase, it’s unclear whether EU and African leaders see eye to eye on what the term means.  African industry representatives and officials often point to building a domestic supply chain up to the final product. EU officials, by contrast, tend to envision refining minerals in the country of origin and then exporting them, according to a report published by the European Council on Foreign Relations. A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS CASE? The second component of the EU’s approach — strong sustainability and human rights safeguards — faces major trouble, not least in the name of making the EU more competitive.  In Brussels, proposed rules that would require companies to police their supply chains for environmental harm and human rights violations are dying a slow death, as conservative politicians channel complaints from businesses that they can’t bear the cost of complying. An investigation by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre of the 13 mining, refining and recycling projects outside the bloc labeled “strategic” by the EU executive — including four in Africa — identified “an inconsistent approach to key human rights policies.”  However, under pressure from African leaders, stricter safeguards are slowly becoming more important in the sector: “high [environmental, social and governance] standards” are a core component of the African Union’s mining strategy published in 2024.  The Chinese, too, are adapting quickly.  “China’s also getting good with standards,” said Sarah Logan, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations who co-authored the assessment of African and European interpretations of value addition. “If they are made to, Chinese mining companies are very capable of adhering to ESG standards.”  Therefore, besides massively scaling up investment, the EU and European companies will need to turn their promise of being a reliable and ethical partner into reality — sooner rather than later. “The only way to distinguish ourselves from the Chinese is to guarantee these benefits for communities,” Spanish Green European lawmaker Ana Miranda Paz told a panel discussion on the Lobito Corridor in Brussels. This story has been updated with comment from the European Commission.

BELÉM, Brazil — Thousands of Indigenous people and environmental activists marched through the streets Saturday carrying flags, banners and one unflattering statue of U.S. President Donald Trump in the first major protest outside an annual United Nations climate conference in four years. Traffic around the COP30 summit venue in Belém, Brazil, halted as protesters from across the world, including Indigenous activists from the Amazon region, braved the tropical heat to demand governments step up efforts to combat climate change and protect nature. “For the first time, at a COP event, we, the indigenous peoples, are occupying this space and speaking for ourselves,” said Takak Xikrin, a member of the local Xikrin people. Members of his community carried banners decrying water contamination in their territory, while other Indigenous activists protested logging and plans for oil drilling in the Amazon. “It is a historic moment for us to be part of this march … and show the world that we are the answer,” he added. “Indigenous knowledge is fundamental to protecting the Amazon. … If Indigenous people do not protect the Amazon, the world will suffer a collapse.” Local media quoted police as saying 20,000 people attended the protest. The march came after two protests centered on Indigenous rights disrupted the entrance to the conference earlier this week. On Tuesday, youth activists and indigenous protesters forced their way into the venue, clashing with United Nations security, followed by another peaceful demonstration Friday that saw one Indigenous group block access to the entrance for several hours. The protests set apart this conference, hosted in democratic Brazil, from the past three years of summits held in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan — autocratic states with little tolerance for demonstrations. Many protesters relished being back in the streets, noting this was the first such march since the 2021 conference in Glasgow, Scotland — a youth-led protest that took place under pandemic restrictions — and the 2019 Madrid summit. “Past COPs have restricted people’s voices. It’s important that the COP has open streets for demonstration so that when the polluters are here, we can raise our voices to them a little stronger,” said Pema Wangmo Lama, a 26-year-old activist from Nepal. “At this COP, people can be upfront, and Indigenous people have been very upfront about the things they and their community have faced” as a result of climate change and environmental degradation, said Wangmo Lama, herself a member of Nepal’s Mugum Indigenous group. At COP30, Brazil’s government has highlighted the role of Indigenous peoples in fighting global warming and protecting the Amazon, which plays a key role in regulating the world’s climate but is under threat from logging, mining, agriculture and infrastructure projects. But many Indigenous groups say their concerns are not addressed in the negotiating rooms. “The meaningful representation of Indigenous people has never been a reality” at climate summits, Wangmo Lama said. “Our voices are not heard.” Climate activists were also part of the march, calling for action rather than more “blah, blah, blah,” a catchphrase coined by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who founded the global movement Fridays for Future. “It’s so motivating to see people who are on the front line, who are seriously affected by the climate crisis, coming together across the world,” said Muhammed Lamin Saidykhan, an activist from Gambia working with Climate Action Network. “I hope leaders are going to see this power and listen to the power and do the right thing.” And at least one marcher shared his thoughts about Trump, who has worked to undermine climate action and chosen not to send a U.S. delegation to this year’s talks. The internationally known Danish artist Jens Galschiøt, whose past works include a series of 26-foot-tall statues commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre in China, created an 8.5-foot copper sculpture of Trump that his son, Lasse, pulled along throughout the march. Lasse Galschiøt had 6,000 3D-printed figurines he was handing out along the way. The statue depicts the U.S. president naked, holding a golf club in one hand and the scales of justice in the other. He sits on the back of a thin man who stands on a pedestal that reads, “The Orange Plague.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. “Trump is the big guy here, and the small guy represents you and me, Denmark, Brazil and the climate that he’s trying to control,” said Lasse Galschiøt, adding: “He shouldn’t be on our shoulders.” At a press conference Friday night, COP30 CEO Ana Toni said the summit has more than 900 Indigenous participants, much higher than the 300 registered at last year’s gathering in Azerbaijan, and promised to listen to them. Brazil came under pressure from the U.N. earlier this week over the protests disrupting access. The Brazilian government has also faced months of complaints about its decision to host the summit in Belém, a port city near the mouth of the Amazon River where a shortage of hotel rooms has sent lodging costs soaring and prompted some countries and even the U.N. to consider limiting the number of people they sent. “We have a COP in the Amazon. We could have chosen to have a COP in São Paulo, Rio or Brasília, but we would not be seeing so many Indigenous peoples,” Toni said. “They wouldn’t have had their voice heard.”

President Donald Trump is no longer content to stand aloof from the global alliance trying to combat climate change. His new goal is to demolish it — and replace it with a new coalition reliant on U.S. fossil fuels. Trump’s increasingly assertive energy diplomacy is one of the biggest challenges awaiting the world leaders, diplomats and business luminaries gathering for a United Nations summit in Brazil to try to advance the fight against global warming. The U.S. president will not be there — unlike the leaders of countries including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, who will speak before delegates from nearly 200 nations on Thursday and Friday. But his efforts to undermine the Paris climate agreement already loom over the talks, as does his initial success in drawing support from other countries. “It’s not enough to just withdraw from” the 2015 pact and the broader U.N. climate framework that governs the annual talks, said Richard Goldberg, who worked as a top staffer on Trump’s White House National Energy Dominance Council and is now senior adviser to the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “You have to degrade it. You have to deter it. You have to potentially destroy it.” Trump’s approach includes striking deals demanding that Japan, Europe and other trading partners buy more U.S. natural gas and oil, using diplomatic strong-arming to deter foreign leaders from cutting fossil fuel pollution, and making the United States inhospitable to clean energy investment. Unlike during his first term, when Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement but sent delegates to the annual U.N. climate talks anyway, he now wants to render them ineffective and starved of purpose by drawing as many other countries as possible away from their own clean energy goals, according to Cabinet officials’ public remarks and interviews with 20 administration allies and alumni, foreign diplomats and veterans of the annual climate negotiations. Those efforts are at odds with the goals of the climate summits, which included a Biden administration-backed pledge two years ago for the world to transition away from fossil fuels. Slowing or reversing that shift could send global temperatures soaring above the goals set in Paris a decade ago, threatening a spike in the extreme weather that is already pummeling countries and economies. The White House says Trump’s campaign to unleash American oil, gas and coal is for the United States’ benefit — and the world’s. “The Green New Scam would have killed America if President Trump had not been elected to implement his commonsense energy agenda — which is focused on utilizing the liquid gold under our feet to strengthen our grid stability and drive down costs for American families and businesses,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement. “President Trump will not jeopardize our country’s economic and national security to pursue vague climate goals that are killing other countries.” ‘WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE PARIS AGREEMENT DIE’ The Trump administration is declining to send any high-level representatives to the COP30 climate talks, which will formally begin Monday in Belém, Brazil, according to a White House official who declined to comment on the record about whether any U.S. government officials would participate. Trump’s view that the annual negotiations are antithetical to his energy and economic agenda is also spreading among other Republican officials. Many GOP leaders, including 17 state attorneys general, argued last month that attending the summit would only legitimize the proceedings and its expected calls for ditching fossil fuels more swiftly. Climate diplomats from other countries say they’ve gotten the message about where the U.S. stands now — and are prepared to act without Washington. “We have a large country, a president, and a vice president who would like to see the Paris Agreement die,” Laurence Tubiana, the former French government official credited as a key architect of the 2015 climate pact, said of the United States. “The U.S. will not play a major role” at the summit, said Jochen Flasbarth, undersecretary in the German Ministry of Environmental Affairs. “The world is collectively outraged, and so we will focus — as will everyone else — on engaging in talks with those who are driving the process forward.” Trump and his allies have described the stakes in terms of a zero-sum contest between the United States and its main economic rival, China: Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they say, are a complete win for China, which sells the bulk of the world’s solar, wind, battery and electric vehicle technology. That’s a contrast from the approach of former President Joe Biden, who pushed a massive U.S. investment in green technologies as the only way for America to outcompete China in developing the energy sources of the future. In the Trump worldview, stalling that energy transition benefits the United States, the globe’s top producer of oil and natural gas, along with many of the technologies and services to produce, transport and burn the stuff. “If [other countries] don’t rely on this technology, then that’s less power to China,” said Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who served in the U.S. Transportation Department during Trump’s first term and is now director of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation. TRUMP FINDS ALLIES THIS TIME Two big developments have shaped the president’s new thinking on how to counteract the international fight against climate change, said George David Banks, who was Trump’s international climate adviser during the first administration. The first was the Inflation Reduction Act that Democrats passed and Biden signed in 2022, which promised hundreds of billions of dollars to U.S. clean energy projects. Banks said the legislation, enacted entirely on partisan lines, made renewable energy a political target in the minds of Trump and his fossil-fuel backers. The second is Trump’s aggressive use of U.S. trading power during his second term to wring concessions from foreign governments, Banks said. Trump has required his agencies to identify obstacles for U.S. exports, and the United Nations’ climate apparatus may be deemed a barrier for sales of oil, gas and coal. Trump’s strategy is resonating with some fossil fuel-supporting nations, potentially testing the climate change comity at COP30. Those include emerging economies in Africa and Latin America, petrostates such as Saudi Arabia, and European nations feeling a cost-of-living strain that is feeding a resurgent right wing. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright drew applause in March at a Washington gathering called the Powering Africa Summit, where he called it “nonsense” for financiers and Western nations to vilify coal-fired power. He also asserted that U.S. natural gas exports could supply African and Asian nations with more of their electricity. Wright cast the goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas pollution by 2050 — the target dozens of nations have embraced — as “sinister,” contending it consigns developing nations to poverty and lower living standards. The U.S. about-face was welcome, Sierra Leone mining and minerals minister Julius Daniel Mattai said during the conference. Western nations had kneecapped financing for offshore oil investments and worked to undercut public backing for fossil fuel projects, Mattai said, criticizing Biden’s administration for only being interested in renewable energy. But now Trump has created room for nations to use their own resources, Mattai said. “With the new administration having such a massive appetite for all sorts of energy mixes, including oil and gas, we do believe there’s an opportunity to explore our offshore oil investments,” he said in an interview. TURNING UP THE HEAT ON TRADING PARTNERS Still, Banks acknowledged that Trump probably can’t halt the spread of clean energy. Fossil fuels may continue to supply energy in emerging economies for some time, he said, but the private sector remains committed to clean energy to meet the U.N.’s goals of curbing climate change. That doesn’t mean Trump won’t try. The administration’s intent to pressure foreign leaders into a more fossil-fuel-friendly stance was on full display last month at a London meeting of the U.N.’s International Maritime Organization where U.S. Cabinet secretaries and diplomats succeeded in thwarting a proposed carbon emissions tax on global shipping. That coup followed a similar push against Beijing a month earlier, when Mexico — the world’s biggest buyer of Chinese cars — slapped a 50 percent tariff on automotive imports from China after pressure from the Trump administration. China accused the U.S. of “coercion.” Trump’s attempt to flood global markets with ever growing amounts of U.S. fossil fuels is even more ambitious, though so far incomplete. The EU and Japan — under threat of tariffs — have promised to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on U.S. energy products. But so far, new and binding contracts have not appeared. Trump has also tried to push China, Japan and South Korea to invest in a $44 billion liquefied natural gas project in Alaska, so far to no avail. In the face of potential tariffs and other U.S. pressure, European ministers and diplomats are selling the message that victory at COP30 might simply come in the form of presenting a united front in favor of climate action. That could mean joining with other major economies such as China and India, and forming common cause with smaller, more vulnerable countries, to show that Trump is isolated. “I’m sure the EU and China will find themselves on opposite sides of many debates,” said the EU’s lead climate negotiator, Jacob Werksman. “But we have ways of working with them. … We are both betting heavily on the green transition.” Avoiding a faceplant may actually be easier if the Trump administration does decide to turn up in Brazil, said Li Shuo, the director of China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington. “If the U.S. is there and active, I’d expect the rest of the world, including the EU and China, to rest aside their rhetorical games in front of a larger challenge,” Li wrote via text. And for countries attending COP, there is still some hope of a long-term win. Solar, wind, geothermal and other clean energy investments are continuing apace, even if Trump and the undercurrents that led to his reelection have hindered them, said Nigel Purvis, CEO of climate consulting firm Climate Advisers and a former State Department climate official. Trump’s attempts to kill the shipping fee, EU methane pollution rules and Europe’s corporate sustainability framework are one thing, Purvis said. But when it comes to avoiding Trump’s retribution, there is “safety in numbers” for the rest of the world that remains in the Paris Agreement, he added. And even if the progress is slower than originally hoped, those nations have committed to shifting their energy systems off fossil fuels. “We’re having slower climate action than otherwise would be the case. But we’re really talking about whether Trump is going to be able to blow up the regime,” Purvis said. “And I think the answer is ‘No.’” Nicolas Camut in Paris, Zia Weise in Brussels and Josh Groeneveld in Berlin contributed to this report.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his government to develop a roadmap for mining rare earth metals, as Moscow seeks to join the global race for the strategically vital resources. Putin called for an “action plan” to be ready by Dec. 1 “for the long-term development of the extraction and production of rare and rare earth metals,” state-owned Russian media outlet TASS reported Tuesday. Rare earths — essential components in everything from smartphones and electric vehicles to wind turbines — are increasingly seen as critical to technology and energy security, earning the attention of leaders such as U.S. President Donald Trump. Russia contributes only about one percent of global rare earth production despite possessing vast reserves. According to the Kremlin’s estimate, the country holds reserves of 15 rare earth metals totaling 28.5 million tons. China currently dominates the market, producing about two-thirds of the world’s supply and accounting for almost half of the EU’s imports. Although the EU has sought to diversify its sources, mining and processing rare earths is complex and costly, leaving the bloc heavily dependent on Beijing. Antonia Zimmermann contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — In the midst of a geopolitical storm, Brussels is racing to put together a new plan by the end of this year to diversify European supply of so-called critical raw materials — such as lithium and copper — away from China.  The thing is: We’ve been here before. So far, the European Commission has provided few details on its new plan, beyond that it would touch upon joint purchasing, stockpiling, recycling of resources and new partnerships. It already addressed those measures two years ago in its first initiative on the issue, the Critical Raw Materials Act.  Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has been forced to act by Beijing’s expansion and tightening of export controls on rare earths and other critical minerals this month, as trade tensions with Washington escalated. Europe was caught in the crossfire — China accounts for 99 percent of the EU’s supply of the 17 rare earths, and 98 percent of its rare earth permanent magnets. The new “RESourceEU” plan is expected to follow a similar model to the REPowerEU plan, under which the Commission in 2022 proposed investing €225 billion to diversify energy supply routes after Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.  That has European industry daring to hope that Brussels will do more than just recycle an old initiative and address the main obstacles to diversifying the bloc’s supply chains of minerals it needs for everything from renewable energy to defense applications. The biggest of them all? A lack of cash to back new mining, processing and manufacturing initiatives, both within and outside the EU. “It’s all still very much in its infancy,” said Florian Anderhuber, deputy director general of lobby group Euromines. “We hope that there will be a bigger push that goes beyond the implementation of the Critical Raw Materials Act,” he added. “It doesn’t help anyone if this is just a label for things that are already in the pipeline.” CODEPENDENT RELATIONSHIP The EU should not count on any trade reprieve that may result from U.S. President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Thursday. After all, Beijing has shown time and again that it has no reservations about weaponizing economic dependencies. The key question is whether, this time around, pressure will remain high enough for the EU to mobilize brainpower and assets at the kind of scale it did when it sought to break the bloc’s decades-old reliance on Russian oil and gas. “Europe cannot do things the same way anymore,” von der Leyen said as she announced the initiative last weekend. “We learned this lesson painfully with energy; we will not repeat it with critical materials. So it is time to speed up and take the action that is needed.” “Europe cannot do things the same way anymore,” von der Leyen said as she announced the initiative last weekend. | Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images In the here and now, the EU wants to persuade a visiting Chinese delegation at talks in Brussels on Friday to speed up export approvals for its top raw materials importers. In parallel, energy and environment ministers from the G7 group of industrialized nations are slated to wargame how to de-risk their mineral supply chains in Toronto, Canada, on Thursday and Friday. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY When the Commission unveiled its first grand plan to break over-reliance on China in 2023 — the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) — industry leaders and analysts mostly lamented one thing: a lack of funding on the table.  “Money has been a real bottleneck for Europe’s raw materials agenda,” said Tobias Gehrke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Mining, processing, recycling, and stockpiling all need serious financing.” If the EU fails to free up more resources, experts warn that it is bound to fall short of the goal set in the CRMA, of extracting at least 10 percent of its annual consumption of select minerals by the end of the decade, with no more than 65 percent of some raw materials coming from a single country. It’s a steep target — especially for rare earths, where Beijing has over decades built up a de facto monopoly. While the EU executive has selected strategic projects both within and outside the EU that should benefit from faster permitting than their usual lead times of 10 to 15 years to production, those efforts are yet to bear fruit. “To finance such projects, the next EU budget must provide substantial, dedicated [Critical Raw Material] funding, and financial institutions must deploy innovative de-risking and financing tools,” the European Initiative for Energy Security argues in a new report, calling for a “permanent European Minerals Investment Network.”  “To finance such projects, the next EU budget must provide substantial, dedicated [Critical Raw Material] funding, and financial institutions must deploy innovative de-risking and financing tools,” the European Initiative for Energy Security argues in a new report. | Aris Oikonomou/AFP via Getty Images The REPowerEU plan — a package of documents, including legal acts, recommendations, guidelines and strategies — was mostly financed by loans left over from the bloc’s pandemic recovery program. Similarly, RESourceEU must become “resource strategy backed by real funding,” said Hildegard Bentele, a member of the European Parliament who’s been working on critical minerals for years.  “This requires a European Raw Materials Fund, modelled on successful instruments in several Member States, to support strategic projects across the entire value chain, from extraction to recycling,” the German Christian Democrat said. THAT’LL COST YOU It’s about more than just throwing money at the problem: The Commission’s haste in rolling out its plan is raising doubts that it will meet the needs of a highly complex market — along with concerns that environmental safeguards will be neglected. “As long as European industries can buy cheaper materials from China, other producers do not stand a chance,” warned Gehrke.  In Toronto, G7 ministers will launch a new Critical Minerals Production Alliance (CMPA), a Canadian-led initiative that seeks to secure “transparent, democratic, and environmentally responsible critical minerals,” and also to counter market manipulation of supply chains, said a senior Canadian government official.  This would suggest creating so-called standards-based markets that are ring-fenced to protect critical minerals produced responsibly, to agreed environmental and social standards. A price floor would be set within that market, while minerals produced elsewhere — at lower prices but also lower standards — would face a tariff.  Beyond the immediate funding issues, ramping up mining in the EU and its neighbourhood also comes at a high societal cost. With local resistance to new mines, usually linked to environmental and social concerns, being one of the key obstacles to new projects, investors are often hesitant to pour money into a project that risks being derailed shortly after. “The EU is choosing geopolitical expediency over human rights and ecological integrity, sacrificing frontline communities for a strategy that is neither sustainable nor just, instead of building a durable and values-based autonomy that invests in systemic circularity and rights-based partnerships,” said Diego Marin, a senior policy officer for raw materials and resource justice at the European Environmental Bureau, an NGO.  Jakob Weizman and Camille Gijs contributed reporting from Brussels. Zi-Ann Lum contributed reporting from Toronto, Canada.

BRUSSELS — As Beijing further weaponizes its control over the flow of minerals that Western countries need for their green, defense and digital ambitions, Europe has to face an uncomfortable truth: It won’t escape China’s dominance anytime soon. The Chinese government’s shock imposition earlier in October of sweeping export controls on rare-earth magnets and the raw materials needed to make them has escalated a running trade feud with the United States. The embargo threatens vast — and rapid — collateral damage on the European Union and has forced its way onto the agenda of a high-level summit on Thursday. “A crisis in the supply of critical raw materials is no longer a distant risk. It is on our doorstep,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a pre-summit speech to European lawmakers. “Now, we must accelerate decisively and urgently. We need faster, more reliable supply of critical raw materials, both here in Europe and with trusted partners. I will be ready to propose further measures to ensure Europe’s economic security and I will accelerate what we have already put in motion.” Beijing’s announcement this month drew a fierce rebuke from U.S. President Donald Trump, who threatened to hike tariffs on Chinese goods to 100 percent. Trump is due to hold a high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit at the end of October. The EU, which imports nearly all of its rare earths and permanent magnets from the Middle Kingdom, is caught in the crossfire. “We have no interest in escalation,” Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s trade chief, told reporters Tuesday. “However, this situation casts a shadow over our relationship. Therefore, a prompt resolution is essential.” China and the EU will “intensify contacts at all levels” on the issue, Šefčovič added. Wang Wentao, the Chinese trade minister, has accepted an invitation to come to Brussels in the coming days to discuss the restrictions, Šefčovič said after a two-hour call between the two. The EU is also consulting with the G7 group of industrialized nations on a coordinated response on critical minerals ahead of an Oct. 30-31 ministerial meeting in Canada. Yet, behind the talk of adequate diplomatic responses and potential retaliation there is no escaping the dominance in rare earths that China has built up over decades. For now at least. “In the short term there’s nothing you can do, except try and negotiate with the Chinese,” said Philip Andrews-Speed, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.  HIT WHERE IT HURTS Beijing dominates the entire supply chain of rare earths — a group of 17 minerals used in permanent magnets found in everything from electric vehicles and wind turbines, to F-35 fighter jets and naval vessels. Under its new export controls, importers will need a government license to access not only those permanent magnets, but also the refined metals and alloys that go into them. China already weaponized its leading position in producing and refining critical raw materials — and specifically rare-earth elements like scandium, yttrium and dysprosium — in response to Trump’s first wave of punitive tariffs back in April. Eventually, the White House caved in. This time, again, the Chinese export controls are “a tit-for-tat for U.S. policy,” said a person from the Chinese business sector, granted anonymity to speak candidly. The EU is being hit, too: “The effects are direct and enormous, particularly for the defence sector,” Tobias Gehrke and Janka Oertel of the European Council on Foreign Relations wrote in a commentary. “The EU defence industry risks grinding to a halt as inventory shortfalls could leave it struggling to produce and deliver enough weapons for the war in Ukraine.” China accounts for 61 percent of rare earths extraction and 92 percent of refining, according to the International Energy Agency. It provides nearly 99 percent of the EU’s supply of the 17 rare earths, as well as about 98 percent of its rare earth permanent magnets. UNDERDOG DIPLOMACY  In addition to its minerals monopoly, Beijing has built a legal foundation to capitalize on it — through an export control toolbox that mirrors the one Washington has used to cap exports of leading-edge technology to China. The EU lacks a comparable armory that would allow it to respond in kind. Whereas export controls are now a go-to option in Washington’s and Beijing’s trade negotiation strategies, to Brussels, protecting national security remains the sole legitimate justification to deploy such measures.  “The EU will need to find a way to live in this new reality,” said Antonia Hmaidi, senior analyst at think tank Merics, adding that the bloc may have to give up its belief in the rules-based trading system that characterized the post-World War Two era. “It could also mean that the EU chooses not to play that game, but then the EU needs a different game to play,” she said, adding that weaponizing EU market access could be a powerful alternative. Ahead of Thursday’s summit, calls are growing to ready the EU’s Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI), the only trade policy tool the EU can wield against economic coercion. Working mostly through deterrence, the bloc’s so-called trade bazooka seeks to prevent foreign powers from pressuring European countries — but only foresees action as a last resort. “It’s the usual sabre rattling from the usual subjects, but activating the ACI is not seriously under consideration at this stage,” said one EU diplomat, who was also granted anonymity. Asked whether the EU executive is looking at the ACI, the Commission’s deputy chief spokesperson Olof Gill said: “Right now we’re focused on engagement, and we’re not going to go down the road of speculating about any other possibility.” That engagement is delivering scant results. In June, Beijing agreed to set up a “green channel” for European companies to speed the approval of export licenses. And yet, Šefčovič said, only half of the 2,000 priority applications submitted by European companies to the Chinese authorities had been “properly addressed.” CATCHING UP  Moving forward, the EU needs to dramatically ramp up its diversification efforts. At a meeting with industry leaders on Monday, Industry Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné said the EU’s response must build on two pillars, according to his cabinet: a diplomatic solution and a more resilient supply chain. China accounts for 61 percent of rare earths extraction and 92 percent of refining, according to the International Energy Agency. | VCG/Gett Images That, however, won’t happen overnight. Especially since the EU executive unveiled its grand plan to diversify its supply of raw materials away from China two years ago, officials have been stressing the need to stockpile more of the metals and minerals, ramp up domestic mining and production and seal new partnerships. But concrete action is still lagging, with experts and industry alike lamenting the lack of funding being put on the table. James Watson, director general at metals lobby Eurometaux, welcomed the EU executive’s decision to award “strategic project” status to some 60 mines and refineries inside and outside the bloc, but added: “We still need dedicated funding for the sector, as well as addressing structural issues, such as higher energy costs and heavier administrative burdens, that put as at a competitive disadvantage compared with our global competitors.” Camille Gijs and Koen Verhelst contributed reporting.

NARVA, Estonia — Right on the Russian border, Europe’s first commercial-scale rare-earth magnet factory is starting to supply automotive and green tech customers from a forgotten corner of Estonia. The project represents an act of defiance against Russian aggression. It’s a bid to counter China’s chokehold over critical minerals that is Beijing’s trump card in its escalating trade war with the United States. And it’s a vote of optimism regarding European industry, its backers say. “The future of Europe’s competitiveness is here,” Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal said at the opening of the factory last month. On the day of the ceremony, Russian military jets intruded into Estonian airspace. The first phase of the new factory, owned by Neo Performance Materials, will be capable of producing magnets for 1 million electric vehicles and 1,000 generators for the wind industry annually. These magnets make electric systems more efficient, and demand is picking up rapidly.  European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen even brought a magnet made in Narva to the G7 summit in Canada in June, where she handed it to Prime Minister Mark Carney, in recognition of Neo’s Canadian roots.  As they are made with rare earth elements — metals whose extraction and refining is dominated by China — there was no commercial-scale production in Europe before Neo set its sights on this city right on the Russian border.   Just east of the factory, a fortress sits on each bank of the Narva River, which forms the EU and NATO’s border with Russia.   But it’s not just European industry that is counting on the plant run by Neo. Estonia and the rusting province around Narva also see it as vital to their futures.  MAKING A COMEBACK  Estonia’s third-largest city feels forgotten, peripheral and decidedly unfashionable. The local textile industry collapsed so long ago that locals barely remember it. The colorful Hanseatic hipster capital Tallinn feels distant, with its Michelin-starred restaurants, pricey craft beer and tech startup scene.   “Narva used to be a quiet place at the end of Europe. Young people were moving away,” said Aivar Virunen, the plant’s production manager and Neo’s first employee in Narva. A lifelong resident and former machine engineer in the oil shale sector, he’s excited about the promise of a revival.  Ida-Virumaa, the province Narva is a part of, is the old industrial heartland of Estonia. The region, home to approximately 130,000 people, is centered on the shale oil industry. Or used to be.  The local tar sands offered Estonia de facto energy independence from Russia — in contrast to neighboring Latvia and Lithuania — at the cost of relying on a polluting source of energy and heating.   By 2035, Tallinn wants to have phased out shale oil. For over a decade the industry has been in slow decline as the sprawling plants built during Soviet occupation times have rarely undergone renovation, let alone expansion.   For Narva, the shale exit means that thousands of people in the mining and energy production sectors are set to lose their jobs.  “Of my colleagues, 30 percent come from the oil shale industry,” Virunen explained. “But also, others are coming from all over Estonia,” he said, adding 14 nationalities are already represented on the factory floor.  MOVING FAST  The digital metamorphosis that has occurred in the Estonian government over recent decades is now being implemented in Narva with Neo’s factory. What started with a so-called Tiger’s Leap by the state to connect every school in the country to the internet as early as 1996, led — along with the birth of Skype, Wise and Bolt — to a highly skilled workforce.  “We evaluated lots of places,” Neo CEO Rahim Suleman told POLITICO. The company went with Narva when it “looked at the kind of digital capabilities and the speed upon we could do this,” he explained, referring to the quick permitting of the project.  On a budget of €100 million, Neo received €17 million from the EU’s Just Transition Fund, meant to entice investments to deindustrializing regions that need to move jobs away from fossil fuel industries. In Estonia only Ida-Virumaa qualifies for the subsidies, to the tune of €340 million.  Neo’s factory — only the first phase of a potentially much larger footprint in Narva — will support 300 jobs, with the potential to grow to about 1,000. It will source its supplies of neodymium, a rare earth used in permanent magnets, from Australia. The permitting process was so fast that new EU-wide rules on industrial permitting — the Net-Zero Industry Act and the Critical Raw Materials Act — didn’t influence it.   Maive Rute, herself Estonian, one of the European Commission’s most senior civil servants on industrial policy, said the Narva facility “proves that Europe can not only invent but also produce. It can produce sustainably, and it can lead” the way in the green transition.  BORDER RISK  What could go wrong?  Narva and its environs, with their large Russian-speaking population, could be next in Moscow’s sights after Crimea, Donbass and the rest of Ukraine. Should Russian President Vladimir Putin order his troops into Estonia, the town would be one of their first targets.  But Neo isn’t worried about that, Suleman said. “We’re not a geopolitical company. We have another facility nearby, so we were already exposed longer to Estonia’s way of doing business,” he told POLITICO.  “Let’s state the obvious: It’s a NATO country. We’re confident in the alliance’s response and we hope for the existing war to end as soon as possible.”  As for Estonia, hosting a factory that is unique outside Asia is precisely the type of deeper integration the country continuously seeks with the EU and NATO. It was occupied by Moscow for almost six decades during the Cold War, subjected to indiscriminate deportations and russification. Acutely aware of Russia’s imperialist tendencies, Tallinn has always viewed any policy through a lens of security and deterrence — even in the case of factories.  Becoming a cog in Europe’s push to electrify the car industry and grow the wind power sector is very much in line with that approach — almost as much as adopting the euro or swapping the Russian power grid for the European one.  “With this investment, Estonia is now at the very heart of Europe’s rare earth magnet manufacturing,” Michal said. “This plant proves that it’s possible for international capital, European support and Estonian know-how to come together.”  Graphic by Lucia Mackenzie. This story has been updated.

The Chinese government on Thursday announced broad new export controls on rare-earth magnets and their raw materials on grounds of national security. The move comes before Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to meet U.S. President Donald Trump later this month. Washington currently charges tariffs of 57.6 percent on Chinese goods. Importers will need a government license to access certain rare-earth magnets but also refined metals and alloys that go into magnets. Beijing exploited its dominance in raw materials — and specifically rare-earth elements like scandium, yttrium and dysprosium — against the U.S. earlier this year when the Trump administration declared prohibitive tariffs on Chinese goods. The country controls the vast majority of rare-earth elements mining, refining and casting plus 90 percent of magnet production. Permanent magnets — as opposed to electromagnets — are used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, but also in U.S. military kit such as F-35 fighter jets and naval vessels. China presented the new rules as necessary under itws nonproliferation commitments and “its consistent position of firmly upholding world peace and regional stability,” according to a government spokesperson on Thursday morning. “In principle, export applications to overseas military users,” the text stipulates, “will not be approved.” It adds further limits on “end-users listed on the export control list and watch list” and subsidiaries. In Europe, a new commercial-scale factory for magnets has just opened in Estonia to reduce the bloc’s dependency on China.

BRUSSELS — The EU says it has a new problem when it comes to artificial intelligence: Companies are not using it. As Europe struggles to counter America’s overwhelming dominance in the artificial intelligence space, a strategy out Wednesday and seen by POLITICO will target faster adoption of the technology as a way to turn things around. European companies have been slow to deploy AI to change the way they’re working. Less than 14 percent of European businesses used AI in their activities last year, well behind the global trend. Lucilla Sioli, the boss of the European Commission’s AI Office, admitted at a POLITICO event this month that’s “not a great number.” The solution? “Targeted measures to boost AI use in key sectors of the economy,” according to the draft of Wednesday’s strategy. It outlines ways to integrate the technology into 11 industries, ranging from manufacturing and defense to health care and mobility — with proposals including supporting AI models for autonomous driving and drug discovery, as well as an app store for farmers. As places such as the U.S., the Middle East and China put the technology front and center, Europe’s slow embrace risks squandering the bloc’s best chance to restore its waning economic growth — even as the EU has failed to develop its own models. While Wednesday’s strategy is not about winning the race for homegrown artificial intelligence models, it acknowledges that efforts to build the underlying technology so far have been unsuccessful. Europe’s “dependencies” on other regions for AI hardware could be weaponized and pose a significant supply chain risk, the draft says. Yet companies shouldn’t hold back from using the technology, according to the executive. “Whenever a company or public office faces a new challenge, the first question must be: How can AI help?” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told an event in Turin on Friday ahead of the release. GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS While 4 out of 10 large companies in Europe used some sort of AI technology last year — including text mining, generation and creating images — that figure stood at 1 in 10 for smaller companies. Although data is patchy, that’s a big difference from estimates elsewhere. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that almost 60 percent of small businesses in America use AI. A survey by McKinsey reckons the use globally could be as high as 78 percent. Investing in AI is more affordable for companies that can roll out technology at scale. But companies also have to figure out where to invest, which is seen as a major hurdle. “More than 600,000 Polish companies want to invest in cloud and AI in the next six to eight months,” Polish Digital Minister Dariusz Standerski said in an interview in September. | Martin Bertrand/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images The Polish government surveyed companies on their willingness to invest in cloud and AI. “More than 600,000 Polish companies want to invest in cloud and AI in the next six to eight months,” Polish Digital Minister Dariusz Standerski said in an interview in September. He argued that money is not always the problem, and neither is the burden of changing processes to roll out technology. The problem is instead that companies “only see …. universal solutions,” and not a “specific solution suited for [their] company,” Standerski said. For many, AI is primarily still associated with mass-market chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. That leaves many specialized companies wondering what it can do for them. The draft strategy aims to address this, with the EU set to support a range of improvements for various industries and use cases, and roll them out at scale. Most are small steps. For example, the EU plans to support a farmer-focused app store to allow farmers to browse and discover AI-powered apps, according to the draft. For robotics and manufacturing, it plans so-called “acceleration pipelines” to speed up AI-powered robotics and manufacturing solutions. For the creative industries, it would support studios specializing in AI-enhanced production and develop a platform to utilize AI translation, making foreign-language news more widely accessible. Some of the initiatives are more ambitious in their plans to address dependence on foreign-owned AI, for example, such as a plan to ramp up support for European artificial intelligence models for real-time understanding of the battlefield. Top Commission officials have raised the bar for themselves ahead of the release, arguing the goal of the strategy is to plug AI into companies’ core activities — not just for support services. “What we want to see is that companies integrate AI in their production process,” said Sioli of the Commission’s AI Office. “It’s not about having ChatGPT on your desk when you go to work, and then you tick a box that you use AI.” “We are looking at the core processes, because the supporting processes, that’s relatively easy, already many companies have taken it up,” Małgorzata Nikowska, the AI Office’s head of unit for innovation and policy coordination, said at a hackathon organized by OpenAI and startup lobby group Allied for Startups in mid-September. The real test of success, she said, will be whether Europe can persuade companies to redesign their production processes to use AI.