Europe’s drive to secure critical minerals may depend less on new legislation than on whether communities accept the mines and processing plants needed to deliver it, according to Tobias Rossi, founding partner of Atlas Strategy.
Rossi argues that Europe’s mineral-independence strategy faces a fundamental constraint: governments can accelerate permits and subsidize projects, but they cannot legislate away public opposition. The challenge is particularly visible in Serbia, where resistance to the Jadar lithium project has grown despite its importance to Europe’s battery supply chain.
According to the EU Institute for Security Studies, opposition to Jadar rose from 55.5% in mid-2024 to 63.5% by March 2025. Serbia is not an EU member, but Brussels has designated the project strategic because of its potential contribution to European lithium supplies.
The figures illustrate what Rossi describes as a wider problem for Europe’s critical-minerals ambitions: the gap between setting industrial targets and securing the communities expected to live alongside the infrastructure.
The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act sets 2030 benchmarks for domestic extraction of 10% of strategic raw materials, processing of 40% within the bloc and recycling of 25%. It also aims to prevent any single foreign country from supplying more than 65% of an individual strategic raw material.
Meeting those goals, Rossi argues, will require more than faster permitting. It will require what the mining industry calls a “social licence”: the continuing acceptance of a project by the people affected by it.
Public trust, not just permits, is becoming a strategic constraint
Rossi, who had held roles at the OECD, UNESCO and Forrester Research and is a graduate of the London School of Economics, says opposition to mining cannot simply be dismissed as irrational. Extraction can consume land and water, generate waste and leave environmental damage long after a mine closes. Those risks give communities legitimate reasons to scrutinize company assurances.
In his assessment, Europe’s dependence on foreign mineral suppliers reflects both slow permitting and the migration of extraction and processing to countries such as Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia and China. But reversing that dependence means confronting local opposition within Europe itself.
China offers a contrast, though Rossi cautions against treating its record as a simple model. The country has experienced environmental protests and opposition to industrial projects. Its political system, however, gives residents fewer avenues to delay or stop developments deemed strategically important by the state.
Beijing spent decades building mines, refineries and smelters that helped establish its dominant position in several critical-mineral supply chains. Rossi argues that Europe should not seek to replicate China’s political model or weaken communities’ ability to challenge industrial projects. But he says the difference in institutional constraints helps explain why China has expanded processing capacity more quickly.
The United States provides a closer comparison. American mining projects also face lawsuits, environmental scrutiny and opposition from local and Indigenous communities. Washington has relied on federal financing, strategic authorities and permitting reforms to accelerate development without eliminating legal challenges.
Rossi points to geographic and economic differences, too. The United States has more sparsely populated mining regions and communities with long histories of resource extraction. Nevada, he notes, has space that Saxony does not.
Recycling can help, but it cannot replace mining in the near term
Rossi also cautions against treating recycling as an immediate solution to Europe’s supply gap.
The International Energy Agency expects manufacturing scrap to account for about two-thirds of available battery-recycling feedstock in 2030. Large volumes of end-of-life electric-vehicle batteries will emerge only later, as today’s vehicle fleet ages. Until then, recycling facilities will compete for limited supplies of usable material.
Financial stress in the sector highlights the challenge. Battery recycler Ascend Elements filed for Chapter 11 protection in April 2026 after raising substantial private and public funding. Li-Cycle also encountered severe financial difficulties after securing a $375 million US Department of Energy loan facility for its Rochester recycling hub.
The companies faced their own operational and financial problems, but Rossi’s broader point is that recycling capacity cannot recover materials from batteries that have not yet reached the end of their lives.
The EU’s 25% recycling target remains a long-term objective, he argues, but recycling cannot replace primary mining quickly enough to address Europe’s immediate supply needs.
Permitting delays, skills shortages, high costs and uncertain project economics remain significant obstacles. Rossi sees social opposition as another constraint, and one that industrial policy is particularly ill-equipped to resolve through legislation alone.
Governments can change permitting deadlines, he says. Building community confidence requires years of consultation, credibility and demonstrated environmental performance.
Rossi’s argument is that local consent should not be treated as an obstacle to industrial policy, but as a condition for its durability. Europe’s choice, in his view, is increasingly between producing more of the minerals it consumes at home and continuing to rely on supply chains controlled elsewhere.
Projects such as Jadar in Serbia, Barroso in Portugal and Beauvoir in France could contribute to European mineral production, but each faces its own political and community context.
The central dilemma, as Rossi frames it, is whether Europe can secure the materials required for its energy transition without securing the consent of the communities expected to host their extraction.