Paper Titles & Abstracts

The European Union is overly dependent on external sources of natural resources from the Eurasian landmass. Oil and gas of course raise many geopolitical concerns in this regard but so to do critical economic inputs such as rare earth elements. Indeed, China produces more than 90% of global rare earth minerals that have critical applications in the European economy. Export cuts in these natural resources from states such as China therefore raise a number of trade-related and geostrategic concerns. Steps have been taken by the EU, in concert with partners such as the United States and Japan, to address supply concerns through the World Trade Organization (WTO). But this paper looks beyond the WTO process to analyze whether other strategies available to the EU -such as resource substitution, recycling, efficient-usage and sourcing other suppliers- can realistically help alleviate supply constraints. Using the recent controversy over rare earths as a case study this paper weighs-up the merits and costs of each of these strategies and seeks to shed light on the success and failures of the EU's policy approach to such a critical economic and political issue. Employing perspectives from trade theory and game theory, the paper focuses on two major questions: i) what longer-term measures can the EU adopt in order to ease future rare earth restrictions; and, ii) what obstacles stand in the way of such measures being realized.