EU MOVES ON CLEAN TECHNOLOGY: SUBSIDIES UP, FREE MARKET DOWN

The European Union presented plans to fundamentally revamp its policies on promoting green technologies and dealing with critical raw materials, imposing limits on imports from countries like China while unleashing subsidies and other financial incentives to ramp up home production.

The plans by the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, are essential in moving toward a climate-neutral economy, while also increasing the bloc's strategic independence in a shifting world of geopolitical alliances.

To achieve its clean technology and strategic goals, the EU is making a major economic turn away from the decades of preaching the hands-off free-market economic gospel where any public policy input was considered meddling reminiscent of a bygone age. Now, the plans again call for accommodating state aid, a guiding hand, and financial incentives as key ingredients to move from a fossil fuel to a green economy.

"The one mistake I think we've made and the one mistake which would be old-fashioned industry politics - would be to have no industry politics. And that's what we had for too long in Europe, thinking that the market would take care of everything itself," said EU Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans.

And eying China's state-managed economy, he said that Beijing has taken the lead in the green and clean tech sectors that will dominate the global economy. Now, the EU gets 98% of its rare earth materials and 93% of magnesium from China. "We now understand that the strategic choices China made a decade ago are now coming home to roost. And we also have to make our own strategic decisions now for the decades to come."