Niobium and the EU: - Green Dreams or War Machines? Introduction

As such, a profound lack of transparency on the actual usage of materials secured and procured hangs over the GDIP, the CRMA, and the broader Green Deal. [...] To show how ‘green’ materials and the EU’s green agenda have become entangled with support for the aerospace and military sectors, which are most certainly not green, this report maps, for the first time, the supply chain of niobium at the firm-level. [...] Our research also supports the qualitative analysis presented in the ‘Blood on the Green New Deal’ report produced by Corporate Europe Observatory and Observatoire des Multinationales, which demonstrates extensive corporate lobbying for expansion of the scope of the EU’s CRM list by fossil fuel and arms firms. [...] Finally, the supply chain analysis alludes to the broader new geographies of extraction that are emerging under the so-called green transition with many of the critical raw materials being targeted by the US, EU and China located across the Global South. [...] This is particularly important, given how the analysis of the niobium case shows the predominance of transnational corporations—primarily from the US, EU, and China—in these supply chains in the automotive, construction, fossil fuel and arms industry.