Against the backdrop of current geopolitical instability and unpredictability, it has become a strategic imperative for the European Union to reduce dangerous dependencies and build stable, resilient supply chains. The race for critical raw materials and the search for international tax justice are just two crucial areas where the Union must do more to ensure the resilience of global value chains.
Instead of supplanting partners from the Global South in the race for critical raw materials, the EU must move away from the extractive model based on unfair bilateral agreements and instead focus on local economic development, industrial upgrading, innovation and job opportunities; in short: on local content creation. This can only be done by cultivating just partnerships with Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Regarding international tax justice, the EU needs to ensure that value chains contribute to public policies in the countries where they actually create value. This follows a moral imperative of justice, as well as the necessity of ensuring that value chains are robust and do not further instability and weakness in the countries involved. In the past, attempts for global tax justice have been undertaken to little avail. The current negotiations for a new UN framework to address this topic are a new chance the EU must not lose.
