France has convened an online meeting of G7 finance and industry ministers for Thursday to coordinate Western strategy on breaking China’s dominance of critical materials supply chains, as Paris simultaneously unveiled an ambitious national plan to rebuild its own rare earth and permanent magnets industry from the ground up.
Finance Minister Roland Lescure announced the meeting while speaking in Lacq, a town in southwestern France being developed as the country’s centre for rare earth processing. The ministerial session is intended to prepare common ground ahead of the G7 leaders’ summit in the French spa town of Evian in mid-June, where critical minerals are expected to feature prominently on the agenda.
Lescure framed China’s dominance of the rare earth market as the result of deliberate strategic investment and aggressive pricing that drove potential competitors out of business over decades. He drew a direct parallel with the energy crisis of the 1970s, arguing that the moment calls for a comparable institutional response. “One of the projects we have in mind within the G7 is to ensure — much as the International Energy Agency was created in the 1970s when OPEC held a production monopoly — that we develop alternatives through international cooperation,” he said.
France’s domestic strategy targets the full rare earth value chain, from securing overseas mineral supplies through to refining, alloy production and magnet manufacturing on French soil. The plan is explicitly tied to reducing dependence on China for materials critical to electric vehicles, wind turbines, electronics and defence — a dependency that European governments have identified as a strategic vulnerability following China’s progressive tightening of rare earth and critical mineral export controls.
By 2030, France aims to produce rare earth oxides covering 100% of European demand for heavy rare earths and approximately a quarter of demand for light rare earths, as well as alloys meeting around 10% of European needs. To support the investment required, the government plans to loosen access to state guarantees for strategic projects, extend and simplify tax credits for green industrial investment through to 2028, and channel additional funding through an existing long-term investment programme and a dedicated metals fund. The government is also planning to approach international commodity traders about securing critical mineral supply, potentially backed by a French state project finance guarantee.
