The French Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Economy in charge of Industry, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, emphasised the key role played by important projects of common European interest (IPCEI) and on the need to “industrialise” their processing within the European Commission, during an exchange with members of the European Parliament’s Industry and Research Committee (ITRE) on Thursday 27 January.
The Minister insisted on the role of the European IPCEI, a very powerful instrument, according to her, to reindustrialise Europe. Capitalising on the success of the IPCEI on batteries, which turned the European Union into the world’s leading investor in the sector in two years, the Minister wants to repeat the experience for hydrogen.
In her view, however, the processing time for IPCEIs needs to be addressed, especially by the European Commission. There is, she says, an “execution” challenge. “We have gone from having projects that could be counted on the fingers of two hands to having projects in the dozens”, she said. This is an “extremely heavy” analysis workload for the European Commission, she acknowledged. For her, the challenge now is to move on to a phase of “industrialising the processing of these files to be as efficient as possible”.
Pressed by MEPs on the issue of securing supplies of critical raw materials (the subject of next Tuesday’s informal meeting - see other news) and how to go about it, the Minister said that it was necessary to go back to the periodic table of elements and to map out the current and future needs of European industry and the global supply situation. She focused on nickel, cobalt and lithium for batteries and permanent magnets for offshore wind farms.
In general, the Minister explained that it will never be possible for Europe to be self-sufficient in critical raw materials. According to her, the European Union must therefore invest in innovation to develop alternative technologies (the use of sodium for electric batteries to reduce the use of rare metals) and secure supplies from third countries, by establishing social and environmental standards (and developing a normative framework to promote “responsible mining”). Here, the Minister focused on refining technologies and sites and the need for Europe to catch up with China, the US, and the UK in this area.
The Minister recalled that three high-level conferences will be held on the strategic empowerment of the European Union. On 8 February there will be a conference on digital sovereignty, on 3 March a conference on health, and on 9 March a conference on decarbonisation. A first ministerial meeting was held on 13 January on the issue of strategic autonomy (see EUROPE 12867/6). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)