The European Union (EU) is increasingly looking to the Arctic to shore up its critical minerals supply chains, as geopolitical tensions and its push towards electrification and defence expose the bloc’s reliance on China for key raw materials.
At the EU’s Arctic Forum, Indigenous peoples’ dialogue and Arctic youth dialogue, held in Brussels from 1–3 September, EU special envoy for Arctic affairs Jyrki Katainen said the war in Ukraine, China’s influence, and changing US policy had altered the region’s geopolitical and economic importance, according to Euronews.
“We are becoming increasingly dependent on the Arctic, economically, and militarily,” Katainen explains.
According to GEM Mining Consulting CEO Juan Ignacio Guzman, the Arctic’s vast endowment of critical minerals offers opportunities to strengthen global supply chains, as previously reported.
“The Arctic region provides us with a wide range of critical raw materials, which we have been importing, largely from China,” Katainen adds.
“We have understood that this is not sustainable anymore. We have to utilise our own resources.”
For Europe-focused explorers and developers, that shift could be significant.
Deepening mineral endowment: Basin Energy
Rather than representing a new source of mineral supply, the Arctic is being viewed as a strategic part of Europe’s efforts to build more resilient and locally controlled critical minerals supply chains.
Explorers operating across the Nordic countries and wider European Arctic have the potential to become an important link between Europe’s geological endowment and its ambitions to reduce dependence on China.
For example, Basin Energy (ASX:BSN) has a portfolio of assets in northern Sweden and Finland focused primarily on uranium exploration.
Basin says its northern Sweden projects lie within a prospective metallogenic belt in the Fennoscandian Shield, which hosts a diverse range of mineral deposits.
Since acquiring the assets in Q4 2024, Basin Energy conducted an initial reconnaissance mapping and sampling program and completed structural logging and sampling of 59 selected historical drill holes from the Virka, Björkberget, and Rävaberget projects.
The company’s Finnish assets cover 22.2km2 and are focused on uranium discoveries in three strategic districts.
The Palmottu Project includes historical work completed between 1979 and 1998, which Basin says provides confidence in the style or target and allows for more focused follow-up work.
Historical work at the Löttö Project identified numerous uranium occurrences within bedrock and in glacial cover. Two main areas containing uranium associated with molybdenum and phosphate rock in of interest were identified for initial assessment.
Meanwhile, the Temo Project in the 1960s after uranium associated with phosphorus pentoxide was identified. The project is adjacent to the Siilinjarvi Phosphate Mine, Finland’s largest open-pit mine.
Eight drill holes are known to have been completed within the project area, with each reported to have intersected triuranium octoxide and phosphorous pentoxide.
Basin Energy plans to undertake verification work to confirm the underlying data and facilitate future reporting, if warranted.
‘Extremely strategic’: Latitude 66
Alongside Basin Energy in Finland is Latitude 66 (ASX:LAT), which owns the Kuusamo Schist Belt (KSB) Project and the Peräphoja Schist Belt Project.
KSB hosts an existing 7.3 million tonne resource at 2.7 grams per tonne gold for 650,000 ounces and 0.08% cobalt for 5,840 tonnes. Meanwhile, PSB consists of one granted exploration licence, two exploration licence applications, and one reservation licence.
At KSB, Latitude 66 is preparing to begin drilling this quarter, after receiving exploration permits over the K1, K2, and K3 deposits.
Managing Director Grant Coyle says the permit grant follows 18 months of work on landowner agreements, authority engagement, and the first stage of the environmental impact assessment.
“We have secured landowner agreements, worked closely with the relevant authorities throughout the permitting process, successfully completed the first stage of the EIA process, and progressed exploration activities,” Coyle says.
An optimised Scoping Study is scheduled for completion in Q3 2026, followed by a Prefeasibility Study. Diamond drilling will test the K1 extension and newly defined conductors.
Speaking previously to Mining.com.au, Technical Director Toby Wellman says Latitude 66’s diversified portfolio was strategically positioned within the key European supply chain narratives.
“The critical minerals aspect associated with our Finnish asset is extremely strategic for us in the European Union,” Wellman told this news service.
“The supply chain issues that Europe is facing at the moment have been identified by the EU who introduced a mandate where 10% of critical minerals production needs to be sourced from inside the EU. Cobalt is one of those critical minerals.”
Cooking with a ‘central kitchen’ model
However, extracting the minerals is only one part of the equation. Katainen says the answer is not simply to open more mines but to invest in processing capacity, a particular weak point for the bloc.
At the forum, he proposed what he described as a ‘central kitchen’ model, potentially located in northern Sweden or Finland, where raw materials extracted from different European mines could be processed or separated into individual rare earth elements.
Such a model could create a European processing hub capable of supplying multiple industries while further reducing the bloc’s dependence on China down the value chain.
“I’ve been building a model … which takes all the raw materials, the rocks, and separates different rare earth elements from each other,” Katainen adds.
“And in order to make this happen, we need to ask you to regulate prices, organise stockpiling facilities for those elements, and provide some investment support.”
As of August 2026, the EU extracts roughly 3% of its critical raw material needs, processes 15%, and recycles about 10%, according to data from Energy Solutions Intelligence.
Those figures remain below the bloc’s 2030 targets for domestic extraction, processing, and recycling, highlighting the gap between Europe’s ambitions and its existing capabilities.
That gap could put the spotlight on companies such as Basin Energy and Latitude 66, which are exploring Europe’s own mineral potential.
For explorers, the EU’s push creates a stronger strategic case for finding new deposits. For developers, it could improve the rationale for bringing those resources into production.
The Arctic may be becoming more than a geological frontier for Europe. It could become a critical proving ground for whether the bloc can turn its ambitions for mineral independence into an actual functioning domestic supply chain.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: iStock, Basin Energy, & Latitude 66
