Netherlands exported 1,184 tonnes of lithium recovered from used batteries and accumulators to China in 2025, highlighting a persistent gap between European strategic autonomy goals and current recycling infrastructure.
The data, reported by Algemeen Dagblad, reveals that despite widespread political consensus on reducing dependence on Chinese rare-earth and battery-mineral supplies, a significant portion of the Netherlands' domestic lithium stream continues to flow eastward.
The export volume underscores the structural challenge facing the European battery value chain.
While the EU has invested heavily in securing upstream mining rights and building gigafactories for cell production, the downstream recycling ecosystem remains underdeveloped.
Without sufficient domestic processing capacity, end-of-life batteries are shipped to China, where established industrial clusters can refine the materials at scale and lower cost.
This dynamic creates a circular dependency that complicates Brussels' efforts to decouple from Beijing's dominance in critical raw materials.