Grzegorz Stec

Senior analyst and head of the Brussels office at MERICS (the Mercator Institute for China Studies), Europe’s largest China-focused think tank. His work centres on EU–China relations, the EU’s pursuit of a coherent China policy, and critical raw materials. POLITICO named him one of its Brussels ‘Power 40’ policy influencers in 2023.

On the Sinica panel Stec gives the European vantage on the US–Ukraine minerals deal, mapping Europe’s dependence on Chinese supply and its belated turn to strategic autonomy.

Core positions

• Europe is dangerously concentrated: 98% of the EU’s rare-earth imports come from China, and the dependency has already been leveraged (the 2020–21 halt of graphite exports to Sweden).
• The 2023 Critical Raw Materials Act and Global Gateway deals are Brussels’ answer, but their strong sustainability requirements make European statecraft slower and less well-funded than the US or Chinese alternatives.
• The deal is a ‘mixed bag’ for Europe: welcome US engagement in Ukraine, but a risk that American priorities crowd out European reconstruction interests amid a fraying transatlantic relationship.
• The EU is ‘the institutionalist, the globalist, the regulator in the room’, now learning to operate in a security-minded, transactional, fast-moving world — building open strategic autonomy while keeping tough conversations open with both Washington and Beijing.

In the wiki

• Ivan Us, Jim Mullinax, Grzegorz Stec, and Xu Qinduo on the Ukraine-US Minerals Deal, Critical Minerals, and Rebuilding Ukraine — the Brussels vantage on dependence, strategic autonomy, and Greenland as a parallel flashpoint