EU Commissioner Calls for Joint Rare Earths Reserves to Mitigate Threats From Communist China

Refining rare earths is an even bigger challenge, as their processing creates pollution and poses significant health risks to the public, one expert said.

An industrial plant pollutes the air and produces hazardous waste in Baotou, Inner Mongolia, China, in this 2016 image. ebenart/Shutterstock

As the communist regime in China continues to use rare earths as leverage in geopolitics against the free world, a European Union (EU) commissioner called on member countries to establish a joint rare earth reserve to mitigate future economic blackmail and supply chain disruption by Beijing.

“All European countries today have strategic reserves for oil and gas. We should do the same for strategic raw materials,” the EU executive vice president for prosperity and industrial strategy, Stéphane Séjourné of France, told German newspaper Handelsblatt on June 23.