EU to Stockpile Critical Minerals Over War Risk
'The EU faces an increasingly complex and deteriorating risk landscape marked by rising geopolitical tensions, including conflict, the mounting impacts of climate change, environmental degradation, and hybrid and cyber threats,'' the European Commission said in a draft document setting out a stockpiling strategy, seen by the Financial Times.
Member states should co-ordinate backup supplies of food, medicines and even nuclear fuel, the EU executive said. It would also accelerate work on EU-level stockpiles of items such as cable repair modules 'to ensure prompt recovery from energy or optical cable disruptions' and commodities such as rare earths and permanent magnets, which are crucial for energy and defense systems.
Several instances of potential sabotage to underwater communication cables and gas pipelines in recent years have caused concern about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure.
The strategy is part of a wider push by the EU to improve the security and resilience of the 27-country bloc. Last month, General Carsten Breuer, the German chief of defense, warned that Russia could attack an EU member state within the next four years.
The higher-risk environment was driven by ''increased activity from hacktivists, cybercriminals and state-sponsored groups,' the document said.
The EU is also more susceptible than many other regions to the effects of climate change as it is warming twice as fast as the global average. Wildfires in Crete forced 5,000 people to evacuate the island this week.
In a report commissioned by the EU in October, former Finnish president Sauli Niinistö said that security should be considered a 'public good' and called for a preparedness mindset.
On stockpiling, he said that Brussels should 'define targets to ensure minimum levels of preparedness in different crisis scenarios, including in the event of an armed aggression or the large-scale disruption of global supply chains.'
The EU in March also advised households to stockpile essential supplies to survive at least 72 hours of crisis.
On Tuesday, the United States announced the launch of a critical minerals initiative with Australia, India and Japan as part of efforts to counter China.
In a joint statement after talks in Washington, the countries' foreign ministers said they were launching the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative, which they called an "ambitious expansion of our partnership to strengthen economic security and collective resilience by collaborating to secure and diversify critical minerals supply chains."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab News
34 minutes ago
- Arab News
How Western governments avoid confronting Israel
Flying in the teeth of mass public opinion, governments allergic to getting tough with Israel have deployed a host of tactics to put off implementing any measures that might hold it to account. In doing so, they have been prepared to smash much-cherished ethical principles and norms, as well as international law. Keeping the US administration happy is a cornerstone of the approach of many leaders, no matter how many atrocities or crimes against humanity Israel perpetrates. This has contaminated the entire international system. The most egregious failing is not just to ignore the crimes, but to be complicit with Israel's genocide in Gaza and its regime of apartheid. But the complicity brings additional side effects — notably the trivialization of values most of us hold dear. Above all, this has meant hollowing out the international legal system. The international Court of Justice and International Criminal Court are only respected when ruling against the foes of Western powers. When the latter issued an arrest warrant for Israeli leaders, the US sanctioned the court's key actors. The UK has been an alarming exemplar of this. The actions of the government have trivialized terrorism, racism and antisemitism, while belittling genocide, war crimes and rape. Last week, the British government decided to proscribe as terrorist a pro-Palestine protest group that engages in direct action. It is now a criminal offence to join or to express support for Palestine Action, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. This move came as part of a bill that lumped it together with two genuinely violent neo-Nazi organizations, helping to ensure the legislation passed through Parliament. This came after four members of Palestine Action, protesting against Israel's genocide, broke into a British military base and spray painted aircraft red. Vandalism, yes; criminal, certainly; but hardly terrorism. The farcical nature of the legislation was exposed when police arrested 27 protesters on the day it came into effect. One of them was an 83-year-old female priest. Terrorism should always be treated as a serious offence. Yet those who spray paint buildings and aircraft are now in the same category as those who blow themselves up at pop concerts, for example. Police resources risk being diverted away from genuinely violent groups. This will, by design, have massive implications for the right to protest and the right to free speech. The chilling effect on the movement for Palestinian rights will be Arctic. It echoes the way in which ministers in the previous government described pro-Palestinian protests as 'hate marches.' Racism and antisemitism have also been trivialized and for similar reasons. The weaponization of antisemitism by anti-Palestinian groups has often been echoed in government statements. The weaponization of antisemitism by anti-Palestinian groups has often been echoed in government statements. Chris Doyle A once pretty obscure rap act has become known globally owing to one of its member's chant at the Glastonbury Festival of 'death, death to the IDF.' All death chants are vile, but this soon mutated in headlines into being an antisemitic chant calling for the killing of Israelis, which it was not. The Israeli army has been conducting genocide and war crimes, livestreamed to the world. The British government has voiced more criticism of the BBC for not cutting its live feed of this show than it has of the incitement to genocide by Israeli leaders. Serious acts of antisemitism are all too frequent, such as the arson attack on the oldest synagogue in Melbourne last week. So, when government ministers pitch in to this weaponization, it jeopardizes the fight against real antisemitism. It blurs the line between legitimate political speech and prohibited speech. As for anti-Arab racism, this remains the least discussed and researched form of racism imaginable. This is quite something when the people of Gaza are the victims of genocide and all Palestinians under Israeli control suffer from varying degrees of institutionalized discrimination as part of its regime of apartheid. All this threatens freedom of speech. Add to that the way in which many states or cities have banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations or even the flying of the Palestinian flag. Israel has destroyed every single university in Gaza, but in the US the issue has been reduced to alleged antisemitism on college campuses. It is a deliberate exercise in distraction and diversion. Get the debate on to antisemitism or the nature of protests and the media focus switches away from the real crimes on the ground — every single day, the Israeli military's killing and starvation machine is at work in Gaza. The distraction allows governments to avoid having to answer why they are doing so little to stop Israel. The combination of trivialization and distraction is part of the complicity of these governments. They treat the public as fools, but people are not blind to their leaders' abject moral failure on Palestine.
Arab News
an hour ago
- Arab News
How the 7/7 bombings impacted British society and why it remains relevant 20 years on
LONDON: On July 7, 2005, four men joined millions of commuters during London's morning rush hour, making their way into the UK capital's labyrinthine public transport network. At around 8:49 a.m., Shehzad Tanweer, from Leeds in the north of England, detonated a home-made bomb on a Circle Line train between Liverpool Street Station and Aldgate. Within 90 seconds, Mohammad Siddique Khan, also from Leeds, blew himself up on a second Circle Line train between Edgware Road and Paddington station, and Germaine Lindsay, from Aylesbury, bombed a Piccadilly Line train as it left Kings Cross St Pancras, heading towards Russell Square. The blasts killed 42 people, including the three bombers, and left hundreds more wounded. Nearly an hour later, at 9:47 a.m., 18-year-old Hasib Hussein attacked the number 30 bus, traveling from Marble Arch to Hackney Wick, at Tavistock Square. The bus had driven via Euston Station, where commuters, exiting the London Underground, had been forced to make alternative transport arrangements due to the earlier attacks on the tube. The fourth explosion left another 13 people dead, blowing the roof of the double-decker clean off. Adel Darwish, the veteran parliamentary reporter and historian, recalled that the day had started like any other. 'I was on my way to Parliament. I was waiting for the tube, and then there was some kind of disruption to the network. I took a cab and went to Parliament,' he told Arab News. On arrival, Darwish recalled how he had been on his way to a briefing about UK involvement in the Middle East on the other side of Parliament Square, when he suddenly became aware of how empty the normally bustling center of British politics was. 'For the first time, you could actually see some special forces from the police with guns. I mean, that is something we're not used to. It's not like America. So, that was something, some kind of feeling of there being something alien that was happening.' Asharq Al-Awsat columnist Eyad Abu Chakra was also on his way in to work at his central London offices at the time of the attacks. 'When I left home, I saw on teletext that there was an incident on a bus,' he said. 'When I arrived at Waterloo (Station) … it was so crowded. There was a police presence. You could tell there was something big.' In the days before social media, and in the heat of the confusion, Darwish said information was scarce. 'The telephone networks started to go in and out,' he said, describing how signals were affected by a sudden surge in people in London attempting to contact loved ones and find out what had happened. Chakra added: 'I started to receive phone calls from colleagues from the Middle East asking me, because they thought that I should know much better than they did. (But) things were so intense, we could not comprehend what was going on anyway.' The attacks were the first known case of suicide bombings in the UK, and the worst terrorist attack on the country since the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. In all, 52 members of the public were killed, 32 of whom were British, with others hailing from as far afield as Nigeria and Afghanistan. In addition, 784 people were injured in the blasts. Despite the onset of the so-called 'War on Terror' following the Al-Qaeda attacks on the US on Sept. 11, 2001, the UK, with its sizable, well-established Muslim communities, had experienced relative stability despite significant British involvement in the Middle East. However, security services were not relaxed about the possibility of an attack on British soil. In March 2004, Operation Crevice had uncovered a plot to commit attacks on the UK after police raided properties in four counties surrounding London, eventually leading to five men being convicted of terrorism offences. Another cell of 13 people was discovered in Luton in August that year after the arrest of alleged Al-Qaeda operative Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan in Pakistan. Coming in the wake of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, and the subsequent toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003, the motivation for the 7/7 attacks was conveyed via recorded video messages left by the bombers before they set off for London from Luton. The four, all British citizens, had not been known to the authorities as threats beforehand, the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke confirmed, although it later transpired Khan had links to the Luton cell. In his address, Khan praised Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, and blamed Western military involvement in the Middle East and elsewhere for turning him into 'a soldier.' In his video, Tanweer added that the UK government was complicit in the 'genocide of 150,000 innocent Muslims in Fallujah,' and blamed it for the 'problems in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq.' Arab News Editor-in-Chief Faisal J. Abbas was based in London at the time of the attacks. 'July 7 forced the UK to look into its own backyard and see what has been done in the name of tolerance and freedom of speech,' he said. 'I am referring to hate preachers such as Abu Hamza Al-Masri, who was not only inciting against the UK, but was doing so under police protection.' Abu Hamza, the radical cleric who preached at Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, notorious for replacing his hands, lost in an explosion in Afghanistan, with hooks, became the focus of attention on extremist rhetoric in the UK. He was eventually convicted in 2006 of 11 charges relating to terrorism and extremism. The judge presiding over the case said he had 'helped to create an atmosphere in which to kill has become regarded by some as not only a legitimate course but a moral and religious duty in pursuit of perceived justice' in the UK. The domestic response to the attacks was mixed. The far-right British National Party used them as an opportunity to self-promote, distributing leaflets ahead of a by-election in London just a week after, featuring an image of the bombed number 30 bus. A report by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia said it had identified cases of arson against mosques in the UK after the attacks, and that many Muslims reported feeling nervous to go outside. Abbas, though, said the response of the authorities to the attack was positive. 'As an Arab and Muslim immigrant to the UK at the time, and a professional journalist who reported on the attacks, I cannot but commend the UK authorities for keeping calm and carrying on; the way the situation was firmly handled but without creating a scare is admirable,' he said. 'I still remember the press conference of the Metropolitan Police's chief, Sir Ian Blair, hours after the attacks, where he refused to associate Islam with terror, and as such, reassuring the majority of British Muslims who didn't endorse such horrendous violence.' Darwish, too, highlighted the clear and consistent messaging by the UK government under then Prime Minister Tony Blair. 'They were actually approaching community leaders — Christian, Muslim community leaders — in order to make sure that nothing really broke down. So that was actually quite a good move by the Home Office,' he said. Chakra noted how, even while the incident was ongoing in London, the public remained tolerant and calm. '(In) this country, there is no knee-jerk reaction. Everybody was so composed, so tolerant, so open-minded,' he said. 'The people reacted with responsibility, with tolerance, with, I think, solidarity … It was an experience I will never, never forget.' However, he warned that despite an ingrained British sense of 'fair play,' the world was heading in an ever-more polarized direction, and that the UK was 'not immune' to such political trends. The July 7 attacks, he added, had played their part in robbing the UK of its political 'innocence' that once set it apart. 'There is no doubt in my mind that … 7/7 was, in one way or another, the … British scenario of Sept. 11, but of course, on a much smaller scale,' he said. 'However, I think lots of developments took place since then. Globally, we are now seeing lots of events that have been extremely influential in our way of thinking. 'I can never underestimate the danger that Brexit brought to the political scene. I think Brexit was the polite expression of xenophobia, to put it mildly. The 'we and they' scenario in Britain has escalated a lot with Brexit. I think the consensus politics that we used to talk about is gone.' The July 7 attacks proved a precursor to more major terrorist incidents in the UK. On March 22, 2017, Khalid Masood drove into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four and injuring dozens, then fatally stabbed a police officer outside Parliament before being shot dead. On 22 May that year, a suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, detonated a homemade device in the foyer of Manchester Arena as crowds were leaving an Ariana Grande concert. The attack killed 22 people, including children, and injured over 100. Then on June 3 that same year, three attackers drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge, killing two people, before crashing near Borough Market. Armed with large knives and wearing fake explosive vests, they stabbed people in the market area, killing six more and injuring 48. All three attackers were shot dead by police. An independent coroner's inquest into the 7/7 attacks in 2011, overseen by Lady Justice Hallett, found that the 52 victims of the bombers were unlawfully killed, but that no additional security service measures could have prevented the attacks.
Asharq Al-Awsat
3 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Apple Takes Fight Against $587 Million EU Antitrust Fine to Court
Apple took a challenge against EU regulators to Europe's second highest court on Monday after they fined it 500 million euros ($587 million) earlier this year for breaching landmark rules aimed at curbing the power of Big Tech. The European Commission in a decision in April said the iPhone maker's technical and commercial restrictions that prevent app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the App Store breached the Digital Markets Act.
