EIES Recommendation Paper: RESourceEU
25 November 2025
Author: EIES
Read the Recommendation Paper.
To deliver on its ambitions, RESourceEU must immediately mobilise financial resources for European and allied raw material projects. China’s export controls and market manipulation have triggered major global supply chain disruptions and exposed Europe’s vulnerabilities, from batteries to defence systems. The G7’s Critical Minerals Action Plan and NATO’s Defence-Critical Supply Chain Security Roadmap recognise these as risks to our collective security.
Through RESourceEU, the European Commission must produce measures that address both short- and longer-term challenges. If European governments, financiers and offtakers do not invest rapidly in strategic raw materials projects, competitors and adversaries will beat them to the punch and secure these resources. To match the scale and urgency of the challenge, the Commission must:
Immediately unlock substantial EU funding in the form of equity, quasi-equity, grants, and guarantees for both early- and late-stage projects – especially projects that can come online before 2030. This can be done through repurposing unspent EU funds. Funding could be rapidly injected using the blueprint of the Commission’s new Scale-up Europe Fund: privately managed, combining funding from the Commission, the EIB, private investors – and ideally member states. Funds must be easy to deploy and access (including through small and large equity), only projects developed by reliable partners must be eligible, and the EU must be ready to co-invest in projects with allies and partners.
Establish a European Minerals Investment Network (E-MIN) to help assess Europe’s needs across CRMs and direct public and private funds to a pipeline of strategic projects. The network will connect, convene, and consult investors, CRM project developers, and – crucially - anchor industrial investors and offtakers. It will serve as a venue for public-private and supply-demand cooperation. Such network can be launched rapidly with a limited budget to build a focused programme of activities for 2026.
Introduce explicit guidelines for EU member states to mobilise defence budgets to invest in defence-critical and dual use CRM projects, while removing foreign entities of concern from European supply chains. This is in line with NATO’s June 2025 decision to allocate 1.5% of GDP to critical infrastructure and the defence industrial base.
Use price support mechanisms tied to long-term offtake agreements for select European and allied CRM projects to improve project bankability, reduce price volatility, and provide long-term revenue certainty.
Develop the Critical Raw Materials Centre, in close collaboration with the private sector, as an independent, well-funded vehicle with a strong mandate to aggregate demand, enable joint procurement/stockpiling for select minerals, and build a transparent, standards-based global market with G7 partners through price transparency and price formation. Targeted stockpiling can be coordinated with NATO and contracted out to industry. The development of a fully-fledged centre will take years, and the proposed E-MIN can contribute to building solid foundations.