On 9 October 2026 the European Commission named 46 new strategic projects under the Critical Raw Materials Act, and none of them could be about antimony. The metal is on the EU's critical list but not its strategic one, even though the Commission's own research centre calls it essential for defence.

The case for treating antimony as a strategic raw material, and why the 2027 review of the lists matters.

The Commission selected the 46 projects across 16 member states, bringing the EU's strategic portfolio to 93, with 13 more in partner countries. They cover 15 of the 17 strategic raw materials in the Act and are expected to need about €21.1bn of investment. Eight are extraction projects, 11 processing, 19 recycling and eight integrated. Strategic status speeds up permitting and helps developers reach lenders, but it does not guarantee EU funding.

Antimony is absent because it was never eligible. Annex I of the Act names 17 strategic raw materials, from bismuth and boron to tungsten, and only projects for those materials can be recognised as strategic projects. Antimony sits in Annex II, the wider list of 34 critical raw materials, where it has featured since the Commission's first list in 2010.

Critical status rests on two scores from the Commission's criticality assessment, which rates every candidate material: a supply risk of at least 1.0 and an economic importance of at least 2.8. Antimony clears both, with a supply risk of 1.8, level with germanium and natural graphite and above tungsten at 1.2.

Strategic status is a separate designation. Copper and nickel score 0.1 and 0.5 on supply risk and are strategic nonetheless. The Act sets three tests: strategic importance, forecast demand growth and difficulty of increasing production. On importance, a material must be used across strategic technologies, and antimony appears in seven of the 15 the Commission's Joint Research Centre analysed, against five for tungsten and four for bismuth, both of which are strategic.

Forecast demand growth, the second test, is where antimony's case is least clear. The study's headline growth results concern lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel, manganese, platinum and rare earths. For 40% of the technologies it lists, it could offer only market trends, not full forecasts. They include drones and space systems, the technologies it links most closely to security.

Difficulty of increasing production is the third test, and the Act judges it globally: the scale of world output, reserves relative to output and lead times for new projects. Europe's position is context. The EU has no operating antimony mine, relies wholly on imports of the ore and makes only about 164 tonnes of metal a year, so its oxide industry runs on imported metal. The best-known European prospect shows how slow a restart would be. Military Metals reports an inferred resource of 67,000 tonnes of contained antimony at Trojárová, a dormant mine in Slovakia, and says production could resume within two to three years if financing is found. On 28 May 2026, though, Slovakia's environment ministry cancelled its exploration licence, a decision the company is appealing.

Defence is written into the law's own test for strategic status. Of the 46 new projects, the Commission points to two on magnesium and three on tungsten as serving defence and aerospace. The RESourceEU plan of 3 December 2025 puts defence-related raw materials among its immediate priorities, and the EU's first stockpiling initiative has been reported as covering tungsten, rare earths and gallium, with magnesium, germanium and graphite under consideration. NATO's list of 12 defence-critical raw materials, published on 11 December 2024, overlaps heavily with the strategic list: 11 of the 12 are on it, the exception being beryllium. Antimony is on neither.

The materials that sit on both lists have clear military roles:

Antimony's military roles are as concrete as any in the table. The Joint Research Centre calls it essential for defence applications, including ammunition, night vision equipment, infrared sensors and precision optics.

China's Ministry of Commerce brought antimony under dual-use export licensing from 15 September 2024 (Announcement 2024 No. 33), with exports able to continue under a presumption of approval. Europe has been drawn in directly this year. In April China listed seven European entities over arms sales to Taiwan. On 24 July it barred exports of dual-use items to 14 more EU entities, including the German defence group Rheinmetall, one day after the EU added Chinese firms to its Russia sanctions package. The ministry acted under its Export Control Law and its dual-use items regulations.

Those controls have already reshaped what reaches Europe. Eurostat's figures show metal imports from China falling from 2,976 tonnes in 2023, 18% of the EU total, to 1,127 tonnes in 2024 and 137 tonnes in 2025, under 1%. Chinese customs recorded no antimony metal shipped to the EU from October 2024 to February 2025, according to Reuters. Oxide imports held at 2,110 and 2,580 tonnes in 2023 and 2024, more than half of the EU total, and fell to 1,184 tonnes in 2025. That is consistent with the scope of Beijing's licensing, which covers all antimony metal but only oxides of 99.99% purity or more.

In metal imports, Tajikistan has taken up much of the shift, increasing its share and supplying more than half of the EU total in each of the past three years: 52% in 2023, 66% in 2024 and 57% in 2025. Over half the EU's eggs have sat in one basket for three years running, a worry for strategic supply.

The Commission has not said why antimony missed the cut, and one academic review notes that the Act sets out criteria without a concrete scoring method. Three explanations are plausible. The study models drones and space systems for defence but not munitions or armour, where antimony is used. It also notes that lithium-ion batteries are replacing lead-acid ones, a long-standing antimony market. And the EU's limited ability to scale up antimony production at home, together with a fall in Chinese exports to the EU that European buyers have largely made up from other suppliers, above all Tajikistan, may have pointed the Commission away from strategic projects and towards trade diversification.

Antimony trisulfide is also used in ammunition primers, the small charge that ignites a cartridge's propellant. Beyond that, the record goes quiet. Chinese customs reported no exports of antimony sulfide at all from 2020 to the third quarter of 2024, according to the Joint Research Centre. The EU's trade nomenclature has no line of its own for it and groups it with calcium and iron sulfides, so it cannot be tracked separately. Whether primer-grade material has been flowing from China to

Europe, or has stopped, cannot be read from the published data.

The EU's response rests on the Critical Raw Materials Act and RESourceEU, which adds a European Critical Raw Materials Centre and a platform for joint purchasing. RESourceEU supports all critical raw materials in principle, antimony included, but only the strategic list opens the Act's project route.

The Commission says a new call for strategic projects will open towards the end of 2026, and the lists are due for review by 24 May 2027. Antimony Day 2026, an industry event, convenes in Brussels on 24 and 25 November. If antimony joined the strategic list at the review, Trojárová would be the project to watch, though it first needs its licence restored. By the Commission's own tests for strategic status, antimony has a case to answer, and the review is where it will be heard.