The EU’s growing dependence on the Arctic’s resources is forcing Brussels to view the region through the prism of economic security and supply chain resilience – but the rights and living conditions of indigenous and local communities could suffer.
The European Union is becoming increasingly dependent on the Arctic for its climate transition and defence goals and the bloc should mobilise efforts to use its own critical raw materials in the far North to cut dependencies on China, according to a European Commission official.
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Speaking at an event on the EU’s Arctic strategy on Tuesday, the bloc’s special envoy for Arctic affairs, Jyrki Katainen, argued that the war in Ukraine, China’s growing influence and changing US policy had fundamentally altered the region's geopolitical and economic importance.
"We are becoming increasingly dependent on the Arctic, economically and militarily. The Arctic region provides us with a wide range of critical raw materials, which we have been importing, largely from China," Katainen told an audience in Brussels.
"We have understood that this is not sustainable anymore. We have to utilise our own resources."
The EU is particularly interested in rare earth metals, which are crucial for the manufacturing of clean and defence technologies like solar panels or batteries and where it remains almost entirely dependent on China.
Greenland ranks among the global leaders in undeveloped rare earth elements, with massive deposits in areas like Kvanefjeld and Tanbreez. Northern Sweden, Norway and Finland host active and developing projects for copper, cobalt, lithium, and other critical metals.
Katainen, who served as Competitiveness Commissioner during Jean-Claude Juncker's tenure as Commission president, argued that relying on Beijing for materials essential to industries including wind power is no longer sustainable, either environmentally or from an economic security perspective.
Instead, Katainen suggested, the answer is not simply to open more mines — since Europe already has mineral deposits and mining projects, particularly in northern Europe — but to invest in processing capacity, a particular weak point for the bloc.
According to data from the digital intelligence platform Energy Solutions Intelligence, as of August 2026, the EU extracts roughly 3% of its critical raw material needs, processes roughly 15%, and recycles about 10%, leaving a structural deficit of 7%, 25%, and 15% respectively, compared to the bloc's binding goals.
EU processing hub in Northern Europe
In his Tuesday remarks, Katainen proposed what he described as a “central kitchen” model, potentially located in northern Sweden or Finland, where raw materials extracted from different European mines could be processed and separated into individual rare earth elements.
The idea would create a European processing hub that could feed multiple industries while reducing reliance on Chinese processing.
"I've been building a model (...) which takes all the raw materials, the rocks, and separates different rare earth elements from each other. And in order to make this happen, we need to ask you to regulate prices, organise stockpiling facilities for those elements, and provide some investment support," the former commissioner said.
Such projects will require more than private capital, he warned. As a template, he pointed to the InvestEU model, a program designed to boost the bloc's economy by triggering massive private investments.
In 2021, the EU announced plans to open a diplomatic mission in the Arctic and vowed to protect the environment in the region. The bloc also opened a European Commission office in Greenland in March 2024.
Katainen suggested that, beyond minerals, Europe should consider new forms of public-private cooperation and burden-sharing for Arctic infrastructure, including icebreakers.
Currently, Russia operates more than 50 icebreakers, including 7 nuclear-powered units, which is more than all other countries combined. Expensive icebreaking vessels could serve several purposes at once, the Finnish EU official said, supporting security operations while also acting as research platforms and collecting environmental and other data.
The indigenous question
However, the strategic push into the Arctic forces the bloc into a delicate balancing act: securing natural resources without repeating the unsustainable extractive approach it criticises elsewhere.
On Tuesday, one young Arctic resident challenged Katainen over what she described as the impunity with which countries such as the US, Russia and, to some extent, China operate in the region. She questioned whether the EU’s language about becoming “increasingly dependent” on the Arctic risked turning local communities and resources into instruments of European economic security.
In response, the EU envoy acknowledged that Europe needs a more coherent Arctic policy precisely because its dependence is growing. He also suggested the EU's industry is "the most sustainable by far compared to other industries".
"It is the whole value for us. But we have to also pay attention to our economic security and sustainability in that sense," Katainen warned.
He floated the idea of an EU-wide Arctic "neighbourhood policy", a mechanism that would give non-Arctic EU member states a greater say in Arctic policy while providing a framework for using EU funds in the region.
Norway, Iceland, Canada, and potentially the United Kingdom could be key non-EU partners, particularly when it comes to research and infrastructure.
The former Commissioner linked the neighbourhood policy to better dialogue with local and indigenous communities, arguing that the EU needs their input on where investment should go and how sustainability should be ensured.