At the first-ever Central Asia-European Union (EU) summit in Uzbekistan, the issue of rare earths is very much high, even highest, priority.

Over April 3 and 4, high-ranking European officials were invited to have their photo taken in front of the Registan, the jewel in the crown of the thousand-year-old Silk Road summit host city of Samarkand, with the heads of the five countries of Central Asia.

The summit is intended to “demonstrate our commitment to closer cooperation” with Central Asia, declared Antonio Costa, President of the European Council. Admittedly, this is the third meeting between the head of the Council and the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. But this year, the format of the EU-Central Asia summit takes on a special significance, with the visit of Europeann Commission President Ursula Von-Der Leyen, fresh from dealing with the Trump administration's announcements of US tariffs on EU products.

A strategic landlocked region between Russia and China, these former Soviet republics, still close to Moscow and much courted by Beijing, are often used by Russia as a base to circumvent sanctions. Europeans are seeking to strengthen their influence with Central Asian chancelleries for this reason, but also because of their urgent need to diversify th`eir critical mineral and energy supplies.

A European investment forum in Uzbekistan is due to be held before the end of the year, while a European Investment Bank (EIB) office in the capital Tashkent is to be established. A “Samarkand Declaration” is, meanwhile, supposed to reflect the parties' “shared aspiration to establish a strategic partnership”. But back to that focus on critical minerals. In addition to their substantial uranium reserves, the countries of Central Asia have considerable stocks of rare earths and energy and tech transition minerals such as lithium, as well as a whole range of other such essential 21^st century resources.

As things stand, the 27 EU member states are 98%- dependent on China for such supplies. Less than a year after a European law aimed at securing the EU's supply of critical raw materials came into force, the European Commission took the next step on March 25, unveiling a plan to revive mining on the Old Continent, including projects in third countries. Stephane Sejourne, European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, stressed the “sense of urgency” to develop these partnerships, which did not exist “three or four months ago”, since Donald Trump's arrival in the White House with his hard foreign policy aimed at seizing rare minerals in Ukraine and Greenland.

“We see the EU is very interested in Central Asia, confirms Han Ilhan, consultant and board advisor to the Uzbekistan Technological Metals Complex. Numerous projects are currently under discussion. The question is whether EU companies will be prepared to invest more in infrastructure in order to establish a real partnership with Central Asia, and not just transactions.”

If this is the case, then Central Asia could become the new Eldorado of Europeans' dreams: the 34 critical raw materials identified as necessary for the EU, including cobalt, copper, tungsten, lithium and nickel, are present in large quantities in the Central Asian subsoil.

“It's a little-known region, yet all the countries of Central Asia feature in the top 10 countries richest in ores and rare earths, depending on the type of material, with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in the lead,” explains Roman Vakulchuk, a researcher specialising in Central Asia and head of the Climate and Energy Research Group at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

As the new “Wild West” of rare earths, although still in the exploration stage, Central Asia has in recent months attracted investment from several Western countries, such as the US, South Korea and Canada, which have signed agreements and geological prospecting licenses in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The EU, meanwhile, is lagging behind, with a 3mn-euro partnership in Kazakhstan signed prior to a March summit on critical minerals and rare earths, and a memorandum of cooperation inked with Uzbekistan in the same sector last May.

“The investment climate is not very favourable, so we are not yet seeing a rush of Western mining companies to Central Asia for rare metals. But it won't be long,” says a French diplomat posted in Kazakhstan, pointing to the absence of international standards in the Central Asian mining sector, which makes Western investors wary. These include environmental standards for mining sites and standards for classifying the results of resource exploration, which require recognised evaluation methods that are currently lacking in Central Asia. However, efforts to reform the mining code in Tashkent and Astana are a first step in the direction of international standards.

Nevertheless, Europeans are already rushing into the region: Germany's HMS Bergbau AG is implementing a joint project to exploit lithium deposits in the East Kazakhstan region, and in November 2024, a roadmap for a strategic partnership between Kazakhstan and France in the field of critical resources and materials for the period 2024-2026 was signed, which should enable French companies to penetrate the Kazakh geological market as early as this year. At the EU level, the Commissioner for Foreign Partnerships, Joseph Sikela, has signed a €3-mn partnership with Kazakhstan on critical raw materials and rare earths, while in May 2024, Tashkent signed a memorandum of understanding with the EU for the same sector.

But Europe faces stiff competition. China, a regional superpower that has been interested in its neighbours' underground resources for over a decade, already holds most of the licenses and mining sites in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and the majority of critical mineral exports to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are currently reserved for Beijing. Russia, for its part, has largely secured its uranium needs for decades in this region, which it considers its “near abroad” and on which Central Asia is economically dependent for many infrastructure projects.

“Despite high-level declarations, the European Union has invested in only four critical materials projects in Central Asia since 2022, after signing the strategic partnership agreement with Kazakhstan. This is little compared to China and the EU has been very slow, even though the EU has been among the largest and most active investors in the energy sector in Central Asia since the early 1990s,” notes Roman Vakulchuk, who points out that critical materials were not part of the EU’s Strategy on Central Asia before 2022.

“We can see that Central Asia wants to deepen its relations with the EU and diversify its foreign policy,” says a senior EU official. But the region remains highly dependent on Russia and China, and this is still a delicate subject: at the Samarkand summit, European interest seems to have been appreciated, but it was greeted with caution, with no statement suggesting that the EU will play a greater role in the region.