“We are in a race” stated former Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson in September 2008. Access to raw materials has recently climbed up the EU’s external political agenda, with the launch in November 2008 of a new strategy aimed at improving the competitiveness of EU’s industry by tackling a series of “non-tariff barriers’ against trade in raw materials. The EU is highly dependent on imports for the supply of the principal raw materials required by industry. It imported more than 175 million tonnes of metallic minerals in 2004, with a total value of EUR 10.5 billion, whilst domestic production of these stood at only 30 million tonnes. The import dependency rate for minerals ranges from 74 percent for copper ore, 80 percent for zinc ore and bauxite, 86 percent for nickel, to 100 percent for materials as cobalt, platinum, titanium and vanadium. In total, Europe imports 70-80 percent of its primary resources.
According to the European Commission, the number of restrictions to trade of raw materials is increasing. “Resource nationalism” is growing across the globe, which distorts the global raw materials markets and threatens the EU’s own competitiveness. The Commission estimates that more than 450 of such restrictions have an impact on more than 400 tariff lines. These restrictions exist in key markets for raw materials such as China, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil and Argentina, but also other resource-rich developing countries like DRC.
While the EU focuses on the ‘security of supply’ of raw materials, developing countries have warned against the attack to the sovereignty over their natural resources, and environmentalists have raised concerns about the strategy’s detrimental impacts on the sustainable development of the natural resources sector. In fact, in many resource-rich countries, natural resources are exploited beyond a sustainable level, spoiling natural habitats, displacing local communities, affecting people’s livelihoods and even fuelling armed conflicts – a phenomenon called the “resource curse”. Most of the times, economic considerations in the resources sector still prevail over environmental ones. Will the EU’s strategy tackle these problems or will it further exacerbate them?
