Critical minerals (CMs) have become a strategic priority for the European Union (EU) amid the green and digital transitions. These resources – including lithium, cobalt, rare earths and nickel – are essential for clean energy technologies, defence systems and electronics. Yet, their processing and refining are highly concentrated in a few countries, leaving the EU especially vulnerable to supply disruptions and fuelling geopolitical tensions.
Recent shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, have further exposed the fragility of supply chains. At the same time, extracting and trading CMs pose severe environmental and social challenges, from high carbon footprints to local community impacts. EU trade policy is therefore confronted with a trilemma: how to safeguard economic competitiveness, ensure environmental sustainability and enhance security of supply.
This policy brief summarises research tracing how the European Commission’s trade discourse on CMs has evolved to address the trilemma (Laurens, 2025). Initially, communications focused narrowly on free trade and market access for raw materials. Gradually, sustainability and security considerations entered the narrative. Most recently, the EU has embraced a hybrid framing, simultaneously highlighting economic, environmental and security objectives in its trade discourse on CMs.
Although this hybrid discursive approach can help build broader support for CM policies and agreements by appealing to diverse stakeholders, it also demands careful policy design to minimise trade-offs and deliver on its promises. Without credible implementation and genuine integration of economic, environmental and security objectives, hybrid framing risks remaining largely rhetorical and failing to steer policy in practice.
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Jeudi soir, l'Étoile rouge de Belgrade reçoit le Steaua Bucarest (FCSB) en Ligue Europa. Un joueur de légende incarne à lui seul cet affrontement serbo-roumain inédit : Miodrag Belodedici, vainqueur de l'ancêtre de la Ligue des champions avec ces deux clubs, en 1986 et 1991.
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