Europe depends on 204 strategic products from abroad “to function”

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It's summer, it's hot, and for many it may be time to buy an inflatable boat or camping equipment. Problem: to obtain it, Europeans depend on importing it from third countries, as happened, during the pandemic, with the "essential" sanitary gloves, explains the European Commission. The EU depended and depends on the import of hundreds of materials and products. But beyond that, some, up to 204, "strategic dependencies" are created, according to the new calculation of the Directorate General of the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs of the Commission itself. And here, consequently, the cold sweats are concentrated in Brussels as in the rest of the European capitals. Because without camping you can spend the summer. But without other products, "it is difficult to function," he summarizes in conversation with the avant-garde Román Arjona, chief economist of the general direction.

Furthermore, while some, such as coal, petroleum coke, or rare earths, are well known, others are less so and are critical to transportation, communications, the energy transition, and more. They both represent a turning Job Function Email Database point for the entire community economy because they specify to what extent “there is an excessive concentration on foreign products from the EU, and few possibilities of replacing them with national production,” Arjona continues, in today's key sectors. for today 43% of the 204 are chemical products and parallel industries, and Brussels highlights silicon or rare earths, central to new and renewable technologies. 14% are mechanical devices and electrical equipment, with the Commission highlighting the case of laptop computers and photovoltaic cells. Up to 12% come from base metals and their derivatives, mentioning here aluminum and nickel sheets in their different variants. 11% are mineral products such as natural borates and their concentrates (used, for example, in creams) or molybdenum and its concentrates, present among other products in alloy steels.



In that top five medical and precision instruments also enter, giving Brussels a concrete example, above all, scintigraphy devices for scanning patients and instruments for aeronautical and space navigation, there is nothing. They represent 6% of 204 of these materials and products. The calculation of the European Commission The proportion of dependent products at highest risk of 'bottleneck' is substantially higher for China than for the US, Japan and other partner countries. Among the remaining 14% of "dependent products" are textiles, plastic and rubber articles or transport materials, precious or semi-precious stones, manufactured articles, as well as plant products. However, the general direction specifies how these, in general, are not considered among the "sensitive ecosystems" except for soybeans "due to their relevance for the green transition." The report thus tries to "put light in the shadows" and wants to avoid reliving, as Arjona himself recalls, what was seen with the respirators during the covid, which came from the US, which limited their export and had to be replaced by others. from “more expensive and worse” origins.