Europe’s ‘buy European’ plan misses minerals: strategic gaps for project teams
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Europe’s delayed “Buy European” single-market legislation, now due 4 March, is being criticised for focusing on finished goods while ignoring upstream critical minerals that underpin industrial sovereignty. Michael Wurmser, founder of Norge Mineraler, contrasts EU inaction with the US DFC-backed Orion Critical Mineral Consortium’s move to buy 40% of Glencore’s Mutanda and Kamoto copper-cobalt assets in the DRC, valuing them at about US$9 billion. He argues Europe has sizeable in‑bloc potential in copper, lithium, high‑purity alumina, phosphate and titanium that must be integrated into industrial policy.
Technical Brief
- EU leaders’ latest summit statements concentrated on factory closures and investment decline, not raw-material security.
- China’s vertical strategy spans mining rights, refining capacity, long-term offtakes and full supply-ecosystem control.
- Vertical integration from geology through refining to stockpiles is framed as “resilience by design” for industrial systems.
Our Take
In our Policy coverage, only a subset of the 137 stories on critical minerals explicitly link EU industrial policy with upstream assets in sub-Saharan Africa, so the references to Mutanda Mining and Kamoto Copper Company put this op-ed at the more hard-nosed end of the debate about European supply security.
The implied US$9 billion enterprise value for Glencore’s 40% stakes in Mutanda and Kamoto underlines how concentrated cobalt and copper leverage in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has become; this concentration makes it harder for EU ‘buy European’ initiatives to avoid indirect exposure to Chinese and Swiss-controlled supply chains even when procurement is nominally diversified.
Newmont’s €800 million-scale Cerro Negro Expansion 1 project in Argentina, with mine life pushed beyond 2035, shows that large non-Chinese operators are still willing to commit long-dated capital in politically complex jurisdictions, which is the sort of risk profile EU institutions may need to accept if they want meaningful access to battery metals and other critical minerals outside China and the US sphere.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
Related Articles
Related Industries & Products
Mining
Geotechnical software solutions for mining operations including CMRR analysis, hydrogeological testing, and data management.
CMRR-io
Streamline coal mine roof stability assessments with our cloud-based CMRR software featuring automated calculations, multi-scenario analysis, and collaborative workflows.
HYDROGEO-io
Comprehensive hydrogeological testing platform for managing, analysing, and reporting on packer tests, lugeon values, and hydraulic conductivity assessments.
GEODB-io
Centralised geotechnical data management solution for storing, accessing, and analysing all your site investigation and material testing data.