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EU Seeks Alliance with Brazil to Process Rare Earths, Reduce Dependencies
🇵🇾 Paraguay /Elections & Politics

EU Seeks Alliance with Brazil to Process Rare Earths, Reduce Dependencies

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

News Named sources Context piece
  • The EU seeks a strategic alliance with Brazil to exploit and process rare earth minerals and critical raw materials.
  • European Commissioner Jozef Síkela emphasized diversifying supply chains to avoid dangerous dependencies, citing COVID-19 and the Ukraine war as examples.
  • The EU aims to support local processing and industrialization in Brazil, moving beyond a purely extractive model and ensuring wealth stays within local communities.

The European Union is pursuing a strategic alliance with Brazil focused on the local exploitation and processing of rare earth minerals and critical raw materials. European Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jozef Síkela, advocated for this partnership, aiming to diversify the EU's supply chains and mitigate "dangerous dependencies" on nations that might weaponize such reliance.

We have had a clear proof of this with covid and with the war of aggression by Russia in Ukraine due to the dependence on fossil fuels. Those dependencies are dangerous and can prove extremely costly. One of the ways to address this problem is diversification.

— Jozef SíkelaEuropean Commissioner Jozef Síkela explaining the EU's need to diversify supply chains.

Síkela highlighted the vulnerabilities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's aggression in Ukraine, particularly concerning fossil fuels. He stated that diversifying supply chains is crucial to avoid such costly dependencies. The EU sees Brazil as a natural partner, sharing similar values and offering a reliable collaboration.

During a visit to São Paulo, Síkela is scheduled to visit a rare earth deposit in Minas Gerais, Brazil, operated by Australian firm Viridis Mining and Minerals. This project is one of four prioritized for EU-Brazil collaboration in this sector. Brazil possesses the second-largest reserves of critical minerals globally, after China.

I believe that the European Union and Brazil are partners with a very similar vision, of trust and reliability.

— Jozef SíkelaCommissioner Síkela expressing confidence in the EU-Brazil partnership.

The EU's strategy explicitly rejects a purely extractive model, aligning with Brazil's government demands. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has consistently argued for processing and industrializing these resources domestically to generate national wealth and prevent Brazil from remaining solely an exporter of raw materials. The EU intends to actively support the refinement of these materials within Brazil, ensuring that value is added locally and benefits reach local communities.

Limiting ourselves to simply transporting unprocessed rare elements or critical raw materials is the lowest part of the value chain. Our goal is to help add value here at the local level.

— Jozef SíkelaCommissioner Síkela outlining the EU's objective to support local processing in Brazil.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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