Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 7 May 2025 - Strasbourg

EU support for a just, sustainable and comprehensive peace in Ukraine (debate)

  Hilde Vautmans (Renew). – Madam President, good morning colleagues. It strikes me as odd that nobody has mentioned the deal Ukraine made with the US – how Trump has really bullied Ukraine into signing away a big part of their rare minerals. This also affects us and our ability to support Ukraine in the long run enormously, colleagues.

Let's not forget that we signed a partnership with Ukraine back in 2021. That deal included rare earths and critical minerals. But what happened? Nothing. It stayed on paper. While we in Europe write policy papers, Trump is creating facts. So I have one simple question for you: what is our strategy in this? What is Europe going to do now to get its foot back into the door? We are talking about European minerals on European soil – soon to be European soil, EU soil. Where is the plan to make sure Europe and Ukraine extract those rare resources together? If you want to have real strategic autonomy, we have to do that now.