Navigating Decarbonization Dilemmas: Competing Narratives in EU Raw Materials Policy

Global decarbonization efforts, intensified by renewed defense imperatives, are accelerating the demand for critical minerals and clean-tech components. As Europe races to achieve decarbonization, its heavy reliance on China for critical minerals has become a strategic concern. In response, the EU introduced the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) in 2024, aiming to strengthen supply security and reduce external dependencies through domestic mining, diversification and strategic partnerships. Positioned as a cornerstone of the EU’s ambition for strategic autonomy, the CRMA reframes resource dependencies simultaneously as a vulnerability and industrial opportunity, grounded in supply-security nexus thinking and normative power ambitions. Critics, however, argue that the CRMA may undermine climate neutrality and democratic resilience and will finally fail to deliver by marginalizing sufficiency-oriented strategies and resource justice perspectives, particularly amid the expansion of domestic mining. This paper aims to identify and analyze the competing narratives and discourses shaping the current phase of CRMA implementation. Based on an in-depth analysis of 20 qualitative interviews with stakeholders from EU institutions, industry, civil society, and research organizations, policy documents, and participatory observations conducted between May and December 2025, this paper analyzes how key actors discursively navigate Europe’s raw material transformation. It asks how and why certain policy narratives become dominant, and how narratives emphasizing demand reduction and resource justice fail to gain traction. The findings show that security and competitiveness framings consolidate discursive power through co-optation, strategic normativity, and the reframing of supply as a geopolitical imperative. Meanwhile, circularity and sufficiency remain interpretatively vague. Participatory demands become further delegitimized through divide-and-conquer strategies and climate-conflict simplifications, reinforcing extractivist policy trajectories. The results of the study reveal the discursive strategies through which narratives of competitiveness and security gain hegemony in the governance of raw materials in the EU, while counter narratives are marginalised despite the heightened ecological and geopolitical stakes. The study contributes to broader debates on shifting discourses in EU policies by identifying the shared assumptions and drivers of narrative fragmentation. It thus raises the question of the drivers and obstacles for the EU to deliver not only its ambitious clean-tech vision, but also strategic autonomy.