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Let me give you one example. We have observed that China, over the last 20 to 30 years, has strategically bought mine after mine globally. They take the raw material, they have the processing procedures in China and then they have the monopoly for this raw material. Take lithium: 97% of the lithium we use in the European Union is from China. So we are totally dependent on this one on China. What we do now is talk to other countries in the world, like for example Chile with whom we have just made an agreement on lithium, to diversify the supply chains so that we don’t have again a situation like with Russia, an overdependency and then the potential for blackmail. But that you are free to look at the different strong supply chains that we create together with our partners, so that you have the security of access.

There is a second element where we should be vigilant. That is when there is no fair play, no level playing field. You are very familiar with that topic. If I take China again, the electric vehicles on our market are heavily subsidised. And China has an enormous overproduction, overcapacity which they channel mostly to the European market, because the United States are closing their market already to Chinese vehicles. So we have to be very careful that the market here is not flooded by electric vehicles that are dumped on our market because they are so heavily subsidised.

For us, it is important that you compete on fair ground, on a level playing field, on quality, for example, but it has to be fair. And therefore, if this is not the case, we have to take our instruments to support you to create this level playing field. This is the big topic of economic security that we have developed. And indeed, the last point is that we support our industry to compete on quality, if not on price: And here we have resilience and sustainability requirements that are included, for example, in the Net-Zero Industry Act that we have just adopted in Parliament and in Council.

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Source: European Commission

Speaker: Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission

Format: Speech

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