The Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton called on his personal blog on Sunday 12 June for the European Union to engage in the mining of raw materials in connection with the REpowerEU raw materials initiative.
For the Commissioner, this is a question of sovereignty. Europe is “very dependent” on supplies from third countries for lithium, cobalt, graphite, silicon and permanent magnets, he recalls on his blog, pointing to the Chinese quasi-monopoly on some of these raw materials.
“In the last year alone, prices for rare earths used to make permanent magnets have risen by 50-90%. Without better access to raw materials, our ‘zero-emission’ mobility goals are threatened by raw material shortages or rising costs”, he warns.
He believes supply diversification is the first response, with the second being to develop “European know-how”. On this point, Europe must develop its refining and recycling capacities in order to fix the raw materials imported into the European territory. Most importantly, he said, a “taboo” must be broken, that of mining in Europe.
He believes that mining in Europe can benefit from new technologies that allow for extraction with very low environmental impact. “I would therefore like to see an open debate on the potential of deposits in Europe and how to encourage private investment”, he added.
The Commissioner also wants to set quantified targets for the development of industrial capacity, particularly for refining and recycling, in order to facilitate investment policies and their coordination. An initiative is expected to be presented by the end of the year, linked to the recent REpowerEU initiative (see EUROPE 12955/4). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)