“Our regional and global order is being redrawn. And Europe must fight for its place,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament not long ago.
The message could not be timelier. China‘s tightening of export controls on rare earth magnets has turned a decade of whispered warnings into a live test of Europe’s industrial resilience. The European Union is moving to monitor, jointly purchase, and stockpile critical materials. That is necessary but not sufficient. Europe’s next act should be bolder and simpler: build a single, common market for critical minerals and anchor it to a partnership with the United States.
When coal and steel were the bottlenecks of power, the European Coal and Steel Community pooled them under supranational rules. Established in 1951, this embryo of the EU integrated the industries of its member states to foreclose the possibility of future wars among them, while fostering economic growth. Today, among the materials that determine power are lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and rare earths. The lesson endures: pool what is strategic, create a market big enough to attract capital at scale, and deprive adversaries near and far, large and small, of leverage over chokepoints.
The Critical Raw Materials Act sets clear targets for 2030: extract a share at home, process a larger share in Europe, recycle much more, and limit dependence on any single supplier. But 27 different permitting regimes, subsidy schemes, and standards leave too many seams for others to pick at. Fragmentation slows credible projects, raises the cost of capital, and, above all, hands Beijing a divide‑and‑rule advantage. A miner or refiner cannot finance a decadelong bet if the rules change every time the border does.
Europe should create an EU‑wide Critical Minerals Community. It can’t be another slogan, nor another empty refrain to honor the communautaire spirit. It would have to be a working market. That means one permit recognized across the union, one transparent rulebook, and one set of time‑bound approvals for extraction, processing, and recycling. It means joint purchasing and offtake agreements that aggregate demand and send bankable signals to private investors. And it means a genuine high authority — the modern echo of the ECSC — with the power to allocate emergency supplies, run stress tests, and build shared stockpiles.
This is also the right way to reset the Atlantic bargain. Washington is busy stitching together “club” formats for minerals security. As U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum put it recently, the administration has “announced a framework for creating a club of nations to be able to trade … [and for] refining and processing critical minerals.” Europe should show up as one counterparty, not 27, and make minerals a pillar of U.S.‑EU relations.
Rather than lamenting past, failed initiatives, the time is now to forge mutual recognition of standards, as well as reciprocal access, so compliant European inputs qualify for American incentives and vice versa. Doing so could bolster co-financed stockpiles of defense‑critical materials in support of an obvious trans-Atlantic interest: the more secure future of critical minerals.
The Nordics underscore why this can work. Sweden and Finland — historically neutral, now NATO allies — sit on significant deposits and processing know‑how. Norway, though outside the EU, has its own rare‑earth potential and a deep industrial base. Tie Nordic geology to German manufacturing, French battery expertise, and Iberian lithium, and a continental supply chain comes into view. The political winds help: As NATO members raise defense spending and stockpiles, Europe will need more magnets, sensors, and specialty alloys. Those start with mined rock and end with trusted processing. The licensing purgatory of the past should be purged.
Critics will say this kind of selective common market cannot overcome local resistance to new mines, that permitting is slow for a reason, and that the money will never add up. That underestimates Europe’s desperation to show institutional muscle. The way to shorten timelines without lowering standards is to replace 27 parallel processes with one bar, consistently and predictably applied. The way to crowd in capital is to bundle demand and offer long‑term offtakes, including from recyclers, that survive elections. And the way to keep communities onside is to pair permits with visible benefits, like infrastructure expansion that stretches beyond any single project.
None of this requires Europe to mirror Washington’s industrial policy or to hurl bluster at China. As von der Leyen has argued, the point is to de‑risk. That means diversifying away from single points of failure, being able to surge when crises hit, and ensuring that no single member state becomes a hostage to geopolitics. It also means treating minerals as what they are: the base layer of sovereignty. Markets work best at scale; alliances work best when partners can rely on each other.
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In a Europe prone to treating integration as a way to fence out external competition — or to sketch grand designs for ESG and climate policy — this initiative would be a return to the realism of the Schuman Declaration. The Coal and Steel Community was born as a Cold War instrument: it bound Western Europe together, created a psychological check on communism, and presented Moscow with a market too integrated to intimidate. That was strategy, not technocracy.
“Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan,” Robert Schuman said. “It will be built through concrete achievements, which first create a de facto solidarity.” A common market for lithium, nickel, and rare earths is exactly such a concrete achievement. It would align Europe with the United States, turn scale into deterrence, and make economic coercion as futile as the old Soviet dream of prying Western Europe apart.
Dr. George E. Bogden is senior counsel for Trade at Continental Strategy and a senior fellow at the Yorktown Institute and the Steamboat Institute.
