India’s Northeast region (NER) is often overlooked but has untapped potential in manpower, minerals, agriculture, and tourism. The NER’s proximity to international borders, including China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Nepal, also make it an important gateway. Indigenous communities make up more than half the region’s population overall, and over 85% in states like Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya.
A Geological Survey of India report has found that the region holds over 70 million tonnes of untapped rare earth elements and critical minerals, including lithium, graphite, and vanadium.
In Arunachal Pradesh, GSI has confirmed a primary deposit of vanadium and has identified rare earth anomalies at sites like Lodoso in East Kameng district, including neodymium. Assam’s Jashora and Samchampi alkaline complexes have also returned encouraging rare earth results. The GSI has already identified 38 potential exploration blocks across Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, and Nagaland.
A European Commission report noted that while the EU is a global manufacturing leader for products like automotive traction motors and wind turbines, it does not produce any rare earth elements itself, with 98% of its total rare earth magnet demand being met by Chinese imports.
A report by the Guardian on September 20, 2026 noted how diversification of the supply chain, including rare earths, has become a priority of Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.
However, the most pressing need of the moment is investments in connectivity. In this regard, the EU has already looked East once.
On June 1 and 2, 2023, the Delegation of the European Union to India and Bhutan, the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India and Asian Confluence held a Global Gateway conference focusing on connectivity investments in India’s Northeastern states and the immediate sub-Himalayan neighbourhood.
The Global Gateway initiative is meant to align with India’s own regional connectivity ambitions, including the Act East Policy, by offering mechanisms for collaboration in transport, digital infrastructure, and green energy, and is intended to mobilise up to €300 billion in investment between 2021 and 2027, positioned in part as a counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
A study on advancing EU-India priorities in the Indo-Pacific suggested that transport corridors are a priority sector for partnership, with a focus on transport corridors to Southeast Asia, as the EU-India Connectivity Partnership provides a pre-existing institutional framework that can be expanded to support cross-border logistics and infrastructure quality standards in the Bay of Bengal region.
These transport corridors would extend the Global Gateway’s footprint in the Indo-Pacific and strengthen supply chains linking South Asia to Southeast Asia.
Dr Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, Research Associate at Heinrich Böll Stiftung, explained how Northeast India has been a region whose internal infrastructural development has been closely linked by New Delhi to its foreign policy goals, starting from the Look/Act East Policy to sub-regional groupings such as BIMSTEC, BBIN, BCIM and SASEC.
He stressed that it is natural that New Delhi will also look to position the gains from the EU-India FTA to Northeast India as well, “The groundwork has already been laid out by GIZ projects led by Germany in various parts of Northeast India and funding through KFW, and sustained engagement by German foundations such as Heinrich Böll Stiftung, which remains committed towards promoting work on ecology, energy transition, gender inclusion, climate change and water in Northeast India. The Global Gateway initiative has also assessed the potential of Northeast India as a region to be an important pivot connecting South Asia to Southeast Asia as part of the larger Indo-Pacific.”
“Although connectivity infrastructure has improved significantly, the compliance infrastructure and inter-state and inter-departmental convergence within Northeast India will need to be improved in the coming years for the region to attain the critical mass and meaningful participation in the gains of the EU-India FTA,” Rahman added.
The Global Gateway conference in June 2023 identified 120 projects across five sectors, with plans to draft an “EU-India North East Investment Pipeline Roadmap 2025.” However, four years later, there has been no such document made public.
An officer at Mizoram’s State Institute for Transformation (SIT), under the Planning and Programme Implementation Department, confirmed that there was no such roadmap linked to the state and that they had not heard of the projects.
Investment in India’s eastern states could strengthen the EU’s trade connection with Southeast Asia, while giving these Indigenous communities along India’s lesser-known borders a sustainable livelihood through better trade and tourism.
The infrastructure, the policy frameworks, and the political will on both sides already exist in fragments, and the FTA now gives Delhi and Brussels a reason to connect them.
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This story draws on learnings from a workshop held in Delhi in June 2026 by the taz Panter Foundation, the foundation of the German newspaper taz.
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