On 5 April, European Commission executive vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis and Uzbekistan’s Minister of investment, industry and trade Laziz Kudratov launched a strategic partnership on critical raw materials. This was only the latest such deal, part of a concerted diplomatic and political effort by the von der Leyen commission to secure access to a range of elements from copper, lithium and cobalt to rare earth metals like neodymium. All of these, and more, are essential for the clean energy transition. For three years now, the European Commission has been quietly signing memoranda of unders…
