On Thursday 14 September, the European Parliament will vote on the report by Nicola Beer (Renew Europe, German) on the Critical Raw Materials Act. The text was adopted by the Committee on Industry (ITRE) on 7 September (see EUROPE 13245/1). Among the few amendments tabled before the plenary vote was the EPP’s request to add aluminium to the list of strategic raw materials.
A group of business representatives recently launched an appeal to that effect (see EUROPE 13244/13), which is in line with the EU Council’s position (see EUROPE 13213/8).
Tin and uranium should also be included among the strategic raw materials, according to the EPP. For its part, the European Conservatives and Reformists Group would like to see coking coal included in the same list. The Polish EPP member and former President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, supported this request. In his view, there can be no iron production without this material, which cannot be substituted.
The rapporteur of the text called on her colleagues to approve the report as adopted in ITRE. And she insists that it improves on the European Commission’s proposal, by simplifying procedures for developers, for example.
The text also emphasises the need for fair partnerships on raw materials, an observation widely shared by the various political groups during the debate.
Agreement on critical minerals with the United States
Following the debate on Ms Beer’s report, the Chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade (INTA), Bernd Lange (S&D, German), put a number of questions to the European Commission concerning the critical minerals agreement with the United States.
The agreement is designed to give European companies access to certain subsidies under the US Inflation Reduction Act (‘IRA’) (see EUROPE 13139/3, 13227/8).
On behalf of the INTA Committee, Bernd Lange questioned the inclusion of recycled minerals in the agreement with Washington, which does not seem to want to include them. This was indeed a request made by the EU in the negotiations, confirmed the European Commissioner, who was standing in for her colleague in charge of trade, Valdis Dombrovskis. “That said, the American IRA law limits the origin of recycled raw materials to North America. So it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to change that”, she admitted.
MEPs are also concerned that the list of critical minerals included in the bilateral agreement is too limited. Here again, the Commissioner reassured us of the Commission’s intentions, but not of the outcome of the negotiations: “We have indeed proposed extending the list put forward by the United States, to bring it into line with the lists of critical and strategic raw materials in the European act on critical raw materials (‘CRM act’). It should be noted, however, that the agreement between the United States and Japan only lists the minerals that are essential for electric vehicles”.
The European Parliament will be voting on a resolution on this subject on Thursday 14 September. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)