EU must end over-reliance on China for rare earth elements: European Commission president
To end China’s virtual monopoly on processing rare earth elements, the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday suggested that the European Union (EU) must end its over-reliance on imports from abroad so that the EU could develop its technological industry.“Green and digital technologies currently depend on a number of scarce raw materials. We import lithium for electric cars, platinum to produce clean hydrogen, silicon metal for solar panels, 98 per cent of the rare earth elements we need come from a single supplier – China – and this is not sustainable,” von der Leyen said in a video address to mark the EU Industry Days 2021.The president said that the creation of a European Raw Materials Alliance late last year was made for this purpose, so as to alleviate the bloc’