Pour financer ce déploiement et soutenir les petites et moyennes scieries, indispensables à la transformation de ces bois, il faut réorienter les aides publiques qui vont aujourd’hui massivement vers le bois-énergie, et mieux conditionner celles qui financent les plantations
Cela rejoint les analyses d'I4CE
Il y a quelques jours, le ministre délégué chargé de la transition écologique, Mathieu Lefèvre, a renvoyé aux calendes grecques – 2028 – la révision du cahier des charges de ce plan de plantation d’arbres, alors que sa ministre de tutelle, Monique Barbut, s’était engagée à le revoir avant juillet.
Ce qui montre un manque de constance dans les stratégies forestieres.
« Qu’il faille intervenir davantage, oui. Mais la question, c’est comment », considère de son côté Christophe Chauvin, pilote du réseau forêts de France Nature Environnement. Où ce milliard d’arbres sera-t-il planté ? Avec quelles essences ? Et de quelle manière ? En se basant sur des travaux de modélisation, le comité du CSFB identifie les territoires qui seront concernés : les surfaces incendiées et dépérissantes, qui continueront à augmenter, mais aussi des peuplements considérés comme vulnérables, à adapter. Et des « forêts pauvres mais avec un fort potentiel de bois d’œuvre », qu’il est possible d’améliorer.
Le problème : une approche souvent trop quantitative qui ne se soucie pas de la qualité des bois replantés
benefit-sharing must be legally enforceable, not dependent on corporate goodwill
Through which mecanism?
Communities make their acceptance conditional on operators demonstrating that extraction is compatible with environmental protection through innovation, rather than accepting conventional mining methods.
Thus: Incentive for more innovation
What communities demand is transparent demonstration from independent public-interest sources that the raw material is genuinely essential for EU strategic objectives
Implication: Who are those "independent public-interest sources"?
Communities consistently expressed: “We will not sacrifice our environment for someone’s profit or speculative demand”.
The benefits have to be felt as collective
Research from the Horizon Europe CIRAN project reveals that 85% of Europe’s critical mineral raw material occurrences are located either beneath environmentally protected areas or within a five kilometre proximity
Then, should we break environmental protections for resource security → need for a cost/benefits analysis? Or some political judgement (capacity to consider the specificity of the situation to determin how to interprete it in an understandable way)
The trust deficit is compounded when communities perceive that CRMA benefits accrue to distant Brussels or multinational corporations while burdens – environmental impacts, social disruption, landscape transformation – are concentrated locally and persist across generations
We can also add the broader political context where trust in EU are not optimal...
Opposition to mineral projects in Europe typically stems not from the “not in my backyard” syndrome often invoked dismissively, but from a profound disconnection between EU-level policy priorities and local interests
So it is not individualism, but feeling of disconnection
technical, economic and regulatory feasibility are necessary but insufficient
There is a need for democratic acceptability too
Due to this overwhelming single-country dependency, the European Commission has placed it on the bloc's Critical Raw Materials list to accelerate domestic extraction, processing and recycling initiatives.
How did we get there?
Dependent products refer to parts and raw materials that are needed to build a final product
This connects with the problem of controlling the supply chains
According to Eurostat, EU imports from China totalled €559.4 billion in 2025, a figure that has grown 89% since 2015, generating a trade deficit of €359.8 billion. In 2025 alone, EU exports to China fell by 6.5% while imports rose by 6.4%.
In which precise sectors? Do we have the possibility to compensate?
The senior Commission official's remarks come as the European Union is struggling to diversify its supply of critical raw materials
So there is a demand put lack of supply. Is it because we lack of such raw materials? - Need to have a chart of how much raw materials we have in Europe - Need to have data on how much we have industries to extract such materials - Need to have data on how high is the accessibility of such materials
But the EU executive seems determined to continue the road of environmental deregulation to boost the bloc's competitiveness.
Geopolitical urgency does not mean deregulation, as it also means that we are delying other urgencies. Furthermore, if critical materials are for environmental transitions, it seems a little contradictory.
permitting delays, fragmented regulation and environmental approval processes as incompatible with the "geopolitical urgency"
But this does not mean that we should not submit the proposition of taking measures adapted to the "geopolitical urgency" to the approval of the people.
Europe should move faster than democratic systems would prefer
This can contradict the "Monnet" spirit, which insists on democratic oversight. And I think it is not only a matter of value. It is also a matter of strategy. The legitimacy of EU decisions ultimately relies upon democratic legitimacy. If we do not consider it, then it can be a danger.
Europe should also invest heavily in domestic refining infrastructure, even if environmental standards and labor costs make it less competitive in the short term
What is the balance between costs and benefits? And in the long term, will it stick with environmental standards?
significant budgetary differences
How deep is the difference? Are there perspective to increase the budget? How are the investment targeted?
some key raw materials, such as rare earth metals, which are not found in Europe, prompted the bloc to forge 16 partnerships to date with various nations
What are the conditions of these partnerships
the EU set out domestic targets to increase the availability of critical raw materials by 2030 — 10% of extraction, 40% of refining and 15% of recycling — under rules adopted in 2024
How advanced are those rules? Were they updated since the Letta and Draghi reports?
in the race towards climate neutrality, minerals like lithium, cobalt and graphite have the same strategic value as oil and gas did in the 20th century, citing increased geopolitical interest over rare earths.
So there is a need to consider these materials in a strategical perspective, i.e. in the context of a zero sum game.
EIT RawMaterials Summit
EU auditors
Special report 04/2026: Critical raw materials for the energy transition – Not a rock-solid policy EU risks running short of raw materials for renewables