A Partnership for Strategic Autonomy? The EU-Chile “Advanced Framework Agreement†and the geopolitical role of the EU

This research paper seeks to assess the extent to which the recently signed Advanced Framework Agreement between the European Union and Chile contributes to the strategic autonomy of the EU in the field of critical raw materials. To this end, the first step of the analysis consisted in working on the concept of strategic autonomy as it has been previously employed in different contexts, in order to attempt an articulated definition of the same. This resulted in a formulation comprehensive of three dimensions (access to raw materials, diversification of supply chains, and choice of a qualified partner), corresponding to a set of requirements to be ideally fulfilled by the Agreement. Each of the above dimensions was subsequently evaluated on the basis of a qualitative content examination of the provisions of the Agreement, reliable media reports, academic literature, and data from relevant statistics on democracy, labour rights and environmental standards, issued by authoritative agencies. In the final sections, the outcome of the assessment (incomplete contribution of the Agreement’s to EU’s strategic autonomy, owing to Chile’s partially inadequate environmental policies) is expounded, put into context and commented in detail.