Old circle: The EU accelerated the conclusion of a trade agreement with Australia because of the United States

The European Union is finalizing negotiations on the creation of a free trade area (FTA) with Australia. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, arrived in Canberra on March 23 to finalize the deal. The agreement will make it easier for Brussels to access the rare metals needed to produce weapons and support Ukraine. According to experts, an additional incentive to conclude the agreement was the decrease in the confidence of European countries in the United States. How the EU is diversifying suppliers of critical resources is described in the Izvestia article.

EU-Australia Trade Agreement

On March 23, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, arrived in Australia on an official visit. The Australian side openly expresses its hope to finalize the agreement on the creation of a free trade zone in the coming days.

The path to this agreement took eight years — the EU Council approved the start of negotiations in the spring of 2018. During this time, the parties held 15 rounds of discussions, but in October 2023, the process reached an impasse. Australia demanded increased access for its agricultural products, while the European Union insisted on domestic quotas. The agreement received a second wind only in 2025.

Australia is a key partner of Brussels in the Indo-Pacific region. According to the EU Council, mutual trade exceeded €47 billion in 2025. According to the European Commission, after the conclusion of the agreement, this figure may increase by another third. The EU seeks to put European companies on an equal footing with competitors who already enjoy preferences in the Australian market. However, there is another reason: the EU is seeking direct access to Australian minerals in order to minimize dependence on supplies from China, said Egor Sergeev, a researcher at the MGIMO Institute of International Studies at the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"The growing unpredictability of global trade and the pressure from the United States, which affected both the EU and Australia, have become an extremely important factor for the parties to decide to speed up the signing of the agreement," the expert stressed.

The European Commission recognizes that rare earths are the foundation for all strategic industries of the future, from green energy and the digital economy to the aerospace industry and the military—industrial complex. Experts predict that by 2030, the EU's demand for rare earth metals will increase by an average of six times, and the demand for lithium by 12 times. To avoid shortages, Brussels adheres to a strategy according to which no country outside the union should provide more than 65% of annual consumption of any type of strategic raw materials. It is planned to achieve this through a network of new trade partnerships.

Currently, the EU is critically — 100% — dependent on the supply of heavy rare earths from China. And imports of a broader category of rare earths in 2024 were 95% concentrated in three countries — China, Russia and Malaysia, according to Eurostat data.

And Australia can help achieve the EU's main goal of diversification. In 2024, the country became the world leader in lithium mining and became one of the three largest producers of rare earths.

In 2024, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the EU and Australia, that is, an essentially non-legally binding act of intent in this area. Now Brussels is striving to fill this framework agreement with practical content within the framework of the FTA.

The EU's desire to conclude an agreement is directly related to its military agenda. The conflict in Ukraine is becoming more and more resource-intensive for the European Union, and Kiev's support remains the "most urgent task" for unification in the defense sphere. The increase in the production of weapons is directly related to the uninterrupted supply of critical raw materials, the EC notes. At a time when Europe has to simultaneously supply the Armed Forces and carry out its own large-scale rearmament, the issue of access to metals is becoming particularly acute. Without them, it is physically impossible to scale the production of modern technology, high-precision electronics and complex components for the military-industrial complex.

The partnership with Australia can be built in a variety of formats, but rather it will be about the supply of metals, ore or primary processed products to Europe in order to further use them for the production of the entire range of weapons, Tkachenko believes.

For Russia, this means that the EU is only accelerating attempts to create a more sustainable resource base. If Brussels secures access to Australian minerals and investments in such projects, it will potentially strengthen the EU's ability to increase its own defense production.

The EU can no longer rely on the United States

Disruptions in global supply chains were an additional factor that prompted the parties to accelerate negotiations. Due to the crisis over Iran, which has provoked disruptions in the supply of fuel and raw materials, it is vital for the European Union to form more stable external relations. Australia, with its vast reserves of important resources, is considered one of the most reliable and predictable partners. Canberra supplies LNG to EU countries, in particular.

At the last summit, EU leaders acknowledged that instability in the Middle East is causing energy prices to spike and disrupting supply chains, especially in the Strait of Hormuz.

In these circumstances, the acceleration of work in the Australian sector has become part of a broader campaign to review the external economic strategy of the European Union. The most striking example of this policy was India, with which negotiations were completed in January 2026. This deal has provided European businesses with access to a market of 1.45 billion people and will save billions of euros on duties annually.

As Stanislav Tkachenko emphasizes, such activity by Brussels has become a direct consequence of Washington's policy: the European Union is forced to diversify risks, since it can no longer rely unconditionally on the United States or rely on the stability of previous economic institutions.

"After the Europeans realized that Trump was not united by any values with them, that he was protecting only his interests, they realized that all they could do was try to diversify their trade flows and risks," Tkachenko said.

It was this understanding that prompted the EU to seek compromises with China, sign a deal with India, and now finalize an agreement with Australia. Although India or Latin America could have been higher on the priority scale, Australia proved to be an indispensable raw material partner. According to the expert, now the Europeans have to manage trade relations in a "manual mode" to ensure their security.

In addition to Australia, Brussels continues negotiations with Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and the UAE. Given that the agreements with Indonesia and India have already been finalized, it is the countries of Southeast Asia and the Emirates that will become the next goals of the European Union in its quest to build a new system of geopolitical stability through trade.