Understanding the Methodology Behind the EU List of Critical Raw Materials

Technical working paper documenting the supply risk formula used to assess critical raw materials for the EU across successive review cycles. The formula weights global production concentration (HHI adjusted for governance quality) against EU import reliance; for materials with near-zero import reliance because the EU produces them domestically, the formula collapses to a near-zero supply risk score regardless of how concentrated global production may be. This is not a defect in the arithmetic, it is a deliberate design choice, but it has the structural consequence of excluding domestically produced foundational minerals from criticality designation even under conditions of genuine long-run vulnerability, as long as current EU capacity holds.