Mineral carbonation has been proposed as a possible way for $CO_2$ sequestration. The electric arc furnace slags consist of calcium, magnesium and aluminum silicates in various combinations. If they could be used instead of natural mineral silicates for carbonation, considerable energy savings and $CO_2$ emissions reductions could be achieved. Indirect aqueous carbonation of the slags consists of two steps, extraction of calcium and carbonation. Acetic acid leaching of electric arc furnace slags had been already studied to extract Ca in them, but it was reported that the carbonation of the extracted $Ca^{2+}$ in the leached solution would suffer from too slow kinetics, even at high pressure of $CO_2$. In this work, to develop more efficient extraction of the electric arc furnace slags, hydrochloric acid leaching to separate calcium from them was studied, and the results were compared with the acetic acid ones. The phase boundary between $Ca^{2+}$ and $CaCO_3$ in the solution with pH was determined by thermodynamic calculations. Hydrochloric acid was more effective than acetic acid for the extraction of Ca in electric arc furnace slag, and there is a possibility to recycle an unreacted hydrochloric acid in the leached solution by electrolysis or evaporation.