Stefan Müller Exposes the Fatal Flaw in Europe’s Critical Raw Materials Strategy
Why judging public raw materials funds on financial profit misinterprets the true goal: sovereign economic security.

When you buy a house, you do not calculate the return on investment of your fire insurance. You simply want the policy to pay out when the kitchen goes up in flames.
Yet, when it comes to securing the vital metals needed for electric vehicles, wind turbines, and advanced defense tech, European governments are seemingly obsessed with getting a financial return on their geopolitical premiums.
According to Stefan Müller, CEO of DGWA, this mindset is entirely backward. Speaking at the EIT RawMaterials Summit 2026, Müller pointed out that Europe is finally putting serious public cash on the table for critical raw materials. New investment vehicles like Germany's KfW-backed Rohstofffonds, Italy's Fondo Nazionale del Made in Italy, and France's InfraVia Critical Metals Fund are actively entering the fray. These funds rightly recognize that secure access to raw materials is a bedrock issue for both economic security and industrial survival. But as these entities begin deploying capital, grading them on their quarterly profit margins misses the point entirely. Private capital already chases commercially viable mining projects, and it does so quite efficiently. If a project makes perfect financial sense, the free market will fund it. Public capital, however, has a completely different mandate: to finance strategically critical operations that pure capitalism simply will not touch.




