On Friday 30 June, the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the EU succeeded in securing a political agreement between the 27 Member States on the Critical Raw Materials Act, just a few hours before handing over to the Spanish for the next 6 months. The Permanent Representatives of Member States to the EU have approved the latest draft text submitted to them and have given the go-ahead to start negotiations with the European Parliament. The latter hopes to adopt its position in October, following a vote in the Industry Committee scheduled for 7 September.
The Member States have largely aligned themselves with the European Commission’s proposal presented in March (see EUROPE 13143/2). They do, however, suggest increasing the targets for the transformation and recycling of strategic and critical raw materials in the EU by 2030: 50% and 20% respectively instead of the 40% and 15% proposed by the European Commission. The extraction target of 10% remains unchanged (see EUROPE 13210/15).
Another major change introduced by the EU27 is to extend the lists of strategic raw materials and critical raw materials to include aluminium and bauxite. This was the result of a strong request put forward by several delegations.
“With the Critical Raw Materials Act, we want to recover our autonomy in a truly European way: extracting our minerals sustainably; recycling as much as we can and working in partnership with like-minded third countries to promote their development and sustainability, while ensuring our supply chains”, said Sweden’s Minister for Industry, Ebba Busch.
In their negotiating mandate, the EU27 have added details to encourage, for example, the recovery or extraction of critical secondary raw materials. They are also calling for a greater emphasis to be placed on recovering permanent magnets from end-of-life products.
Once the European Parliament’s position has been established in the autumn, it will be up to the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU to begin interinstitutional negotiations. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)