Conflict Minerals Policy Shows the EU Can and Does Learn from the Mistakes of Others

Oct 28, 2019 | Dirk-Jan Koch and Olga Burlyuk
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It is easier to learn from your own mistakes than from the mistakes of others. But can a cumbersome political structure like the European Union learn from the mistakes of policies tried elsewhere? It turns out that it can and it does – or so we see in the case of regulating trade in conflict minerals.

When the EU was drafting and eventually adopted its regulation on conflict minerals in 2017, seven years after the United States had adopted its own legislation on the matter in 2010, the EU actively drew lessons from the negative unintended consequences of the American law. You might think ‘good news is no news’ and stop reading here. But there is a great deal to learn from the experience and the critical elements – which might be lacking in other policy instances and contexts – that stimulated the EU to learn in this particular case.