Media Reports, page-885

This week, the European Union released its much anticipated Critical Raw Materials Act. Designed to reduce the region's reliance on China for minerals and clean energy technologies, the proposal sets firm targets for the sourcing and recycling of critical raw materialsand aims to significantly reduce the time needed to permit new mines.Although a target of meeting 10% of demand by 2030 from European minerals isn't particularly ambitious for lithium, the EU is currently forecast to fall short on cobalt. Find out more about what's included in the Act and whether the EU can meet its targets here.Perhaps the biggest sticking point facing the EU will be building up sufficient spherical graphite production capacity to meet the target for 40% of processed critical materials to come from within the EU by 2030. Talga's operations in Sweden is the only source of the material in an EU member state forecast by 2030. As a result China will continue to have a near monopoly on the battery anode material.The act also says that no more than 65% ofEurope's annual consumption of each strategic raw material "at any relevant stage of processing" should come from a single third country.

the above sounds to me like Europe is ripe for expansion