On Tuesday 15 July, Christopher Vandome, a researcher with the Africa programme of the London think-tank Chatham House, presented a study on the traceability of critical raw materials, focusing on the African mining sector, to MEPs of the European Parliament’s Committee on Development (DEVE).
The study, commissioned by the DEVE Committee and carried out by a European Parliament technical support service, identifies the technical and political challenges that are holding back the widespread introduction of traceability in supply chains.
Against the backdrop of recent EU regulatory frameworks - the Conflict Minerals Regulation (2017), the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD, 2024), the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (2024) and the Batteries Regulation (2023) - the authors have compared and ranked existing industry approaches to traceability according to the types of minerals involved, the delivery mechanisms, the use of technologies and their validity.
They recommend that the European institutions promote interoperability between systems, support the integration of artisanal miners into traceability systems and assist producer countries in setting up robust regulatory frameworks.
They also recommend strengthening international cooperation, in particular through the ‘Team Europe’ approach, and making public funding conditional on compliance with transparency and due diligence requirements.
To see the report: https://aeur.eu/f/hvn (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)