MOSCOW, May 26 (RIA Novosti) – Europe is highly dependent on imports of critical non-energy raw materials from China and Russia, according to a report released by the European Commission on Monday.
“Europe is highly dependent on non-energy raw materials to sustain businesses and the economy. It has been estimated that 30 million jobs in the EU are directly reliant on access to raw materials,” the report said.
“However, very little primary production occurs within Member States themselves, with the majority produced and supplied from third countries,” the report added, pointing to China’s near-monopolistic position in supplying critical raw materials.
Fourteen out of the 20 raw materials considered critical by the European Commission were the same as in 2011: antimony, beryllium, cobalt, fluorspar, gallium, germanium, indium, magnesium, natural graphite, niobium, platinum group metals, heavy rare earths, light rare earths and tungsten. The 2013 publication, the second such report, adds six new materials to the list: borates, chromium, coking coal, magnesite, phosphate rock and silicon metal.
As China currently supplies 49 percent of Europe’s critical raw materials it should obviously be a target of friendly foreign policy on the part of the EU. However, Beijing’s recent move closer toward Moscow and belief that sanctioning Russia in relation to the Ukraine crisis makes no sense, may be another contributing factor for resource-reliant industries of the EU.
Russia, in turn, supplies 46% percent of the EU’s demand for palladium, one of the most commonly used platinum group metals with no sustainable replacement and strongly linked to the automotive industry. Another global supplier for palladium is South Africa, but miner strikes in 2012 and overall political instability in the region have only further strained the supply risk assessment for the metal, which is used in Europe’s electrical, medical and chemical industries.
