Euromines welcomes the actions of the European Commission to reduce Europe's dependency on third countries, diversifying supply from both primary and secondary sources and improving resource efficiency and circularity while promoting responsible sourcing worldwide. As the recognized representative of the European mineral raw materials industry covering more than 42 different metals and minerals and employing 350.000 directly and about four times as many indirectly, Euromines would like to highlight that Europe has its own mineral resources, world-class deposits and still major potential. We believe that the recent actions of the EC will help Europe become less dependent and improves its sustainable supply chains.
Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President for Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight said: " A secure and sustainable supply of raw materials is a prerequisite for a resilient economy. For e-car batteries and energy storage alone, Europe will for instance need up to 18 times more lithium by 2030 and up to 60 times more by 2050. As our foresight shows, we cannot allow to replace current reliance on fossil fuels with dependency on critical raw materials. This has been magnified by the coronavirus disruptions in our strategic value chains. We will therefore build a strong alliance to collectively shift from high dependency to diversified, sustainable and socially-responsible sourcing, circularity and innovation".
Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market said: "A number of raw materials are essential for Europe to lead the green and digital transition and remain the world's first industrial continent. We cannot afford to rely entirely on third countries – for some rare earths even on just one country. By diversifying the supply from third countries and developing the EU's own capacity for extraction, processing, recycling, refining and separation of rare earths, we can become more resilient and sustainable. Implementing the actions that we propose today will require a concerted effort by industry, civil society, regions and Member States. We encourage the latter to include investments into critical raw materials into their national recovery plans."
The Action Plan on CRMs addresses the current and future challenges and proposes actions to reduce Europe’s dependency on third countries. In particular, the plan aims to:
Figure: Semi-quantitative representation of flows of raw materials and their current supply risks to the nine selected
technologies and three sectors (based on 25 selected raw materials, see Annex 1 – Methodological notes)
Source: European Commission, Critical Raw Materials for Strategic Technologies and Sectors in the EU, A Foresight Study
To read the Press Release 'Commission announces actions to make Europe's raw materials supply more secure and sustainable' of the EC please click here.