Question 16858 — defense

Summary

Mr. Antoine Valentin draws the attention of the Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industrial, Energy and Digital Sovereignty, responsible for industry, to the absence of an operational strategy for France in terms of antimony supply. This metalloid, essential for the manufacture of munitions, missiles, tanks, flame retardants and solar panels, is classified as a raw material criticism by the European Commission since 2011. As early as March 2011, a Senate report “imperatively” called for an effort comparable to that made for fossil fuels for the benefit of strategic metals, in vain. Fifteen years later, France has no national mining production of antimony, no strategic stock constituted and declared and no sovereign refining capacity. The two French units existing ones, in Aisne and Pays de la Loire, only process imported ore. On September 15, 2024, China, controlling 50% of global mining production and 80% of refining, introduced a restricted export licensing regime on all antimony products, citing considerations of dual military and civilian use. The price of a ton of antimony, already increasing since 2020, increased by more than 200% over the year 2024, exceeding $32,500 per ton in October. This restriction is not a geopolitical surprise: China had already caused a first outbreak in 2011 by reducing its mining quotas. The Center for Strategic and International Studies noted at the time of the restrictions that the United States of America had stocks for twenty days of consumption and Germany had stocks of antimony ammunition for two days. France has not published any equivalent figure. Japan, on the other hand, has been building up strategic stocks of antimony for more than a decade through its national mineral resources agency, JOGMEC. The MP asks the Minister to specify the current level of French strategic stocks of antimony, whether civil or military, in tonnage and number of days of consumption covered and to indicate whether these data are subject to consolidated monitoring between the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of the Armed Forces. He also asks what concrete measures the Government has taken or intends to take to secure the national supply of antimony, particularly under the European Critical Raw Materials Act, and within what time frame France intends to build up strategic stocks comparable to those of its partners. He finally asks her to specify why, while antimony has been on the European Commission's list of critical materials since 2011 and the Senate warned that same year of the need to act, no national program for storage or diversification of the supply of antimony has been implemented over the past fourteen years and if the Government recognizes the lack of anticipation that this deficiency constitutes with regard to imperatives of industrial sovereignty and national defense.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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