A suspension of the Raw Materials partnership with Rwanda has been called for by the EU Parliament

A recent announcement revealed that lawmakers have cited evidence of interference within the conflict in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The European Union’s industry has a strong reliance on a wide range of resources and a lot of these resources are produced in a limited number of countries, one of these is China. Now the EU is interested in diversifying its supply base and in order to do this, the EU is focused on pursuing domestic mining expansion, whist it also looks into partnerships with resource-rich nations. In relation to this, almost a year ago, the EU created an MoU with Rwanda around a cooperation on raw materials, which was deemed critical to the European economy. However, now a strong vote has been passed against this arrangement and the agreement as a whole has been called into question.

The interference which has been reported is concerning due to the regions it has been spotted in. This is because these regions are very rich in tin, tungsten, tantalum and finally, gold. This complicates the situation, as whilst NGOs have been calling for the partnership with Rwanda to be terminated since early February, the EU has recently agreed to a raw materials partnership with DRC.