Europe's Strategic Blindness: How We Sold Our Industrial Future
- Editor
- Jan 23
- 1 min read
While Brussels drafts legislation on strategic autonomy, Europe has already surrendered it on the ground. We speak endlessly about reducing dependence on China for critical minerals, yet we've sold off the very infrastructure needed to process them.
The Nyrstar case perfectly illustrates this contradiction. What was presented as a necessary rescue operation in 2019 was, in reality, a geopolitical own goal. Europe lost control over facilities producing over one million tons of zinc annually—and critically, five strategic metals essential for defense, digital infrastructure, and green technology: antimony, bismuth, tellurium, germanium, and indium.
Singapore-based Trafigura now controls these assets. As commodity journalist Javier Blas noted, trading giants like Trafigura function as "shadow diplomats" who weaponize geopolitics. So it doesn’t come as a surprise Trafigura was recently invited by the Trump administration to discuss its role in critial minerals supply for the US.
The irony is painful: the EU's Critical Raw Materials Act mandates that 40% of processing must happen within Europe by 2030. But we've already let go of our assets, among which Nyrstar, one of the worlds most prominent zinc smelters. We preach strategic autonomy while practicing industrial naïveté.
Strategic autonomy isn't just policy—it's about ownership. If we continue selling our industrial base, we sell our ability to act independently. Europe must recognize how it let its own strategic assets melt away before it's too late.
