France and Argentina sign agreement on critical minerals

Argentina’s government has signed an agreement with France to develop the partnership between the two nations on critical minerals, including lithium.

Officials representing both governments inked a memorandum Friday at the French Embassy in Buenos Aires. 

Argentina is home to the world’s third-largest reserves of lithium, which is seen as essential to the energy transition. Both nations have now agreed to work closer, developing ties in this strategic sector to promote financing and investment for new and ongoing projects. 

According to data from the United States Geological Survey, Argentina was the fourth-largest producer of the metal in 2023, behind only Australia, Chile and China.

Together with Bolivia and Chile, Argentina forms part of the so-called “lithium triangle,” a region that experts believe could contain over half of the world’s resources of the metal. 

Lithium is vital to the energy transition, as it plays a key role in batteries for electric vehicles and smartphones.

The new “memorandum of understanding” – signed in Buenos Aires by Laurent Saint-Martin, French Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade and French Nationals Abroad, and Argentina’s Mining Secretary Luis Lucero – aims to “make the mining sector a strategic priority” in Franco-Argentine relations, said the French official.

Lucero described the agreement as a “road map” and a “tool that opens a field of cooperation” which must now be followed by “a bilateral dialogue to establish concrete measures.”

The deal seeks to “raise the bilateral minerals partnership to a political level, taking into account the critical challenges posed by strategic minerals for energy solutions,” Saint-Martin added.

It also aims to “accelerate the rollout of investment projects by French companies in the coming months and years, and to strengthen the mobilisation of public cooperation instruments for project financing,” he concluded.

French investments in Argentina rose by 43 percent year-on-year in 2024, reaching US$7.6 billion across all sectors. France is now the fifth-largest foreign investor in the South American country’s economy.

Mining played a significant role in that surge, with US$850 million invested in the launch of the first direct lithium extraction plant operated by French mining group Eramet, which was inaugurated in 2024 in north-western Salta Province.

“Argentina has world-class mineral resources in terms of quality, quantity and diversity, and will play a fundamental role in the global energy transition,” said Saint-Martin.

Argentina has already signed similar memoranda of understanding on critical minerals with the United States, in August 2024, and with the United Arab Emirates, back in February.

– TIMES/AFP