On Wednesday 3 December, almost two years after the Regulation on the supply of critical raw materials (‘CRMA’) came into force (see EUROPE 13143/2), the European Commission presented an action plan called RESourceEU to accelerate work on reducing its dependence on strategic raw materials.
RESourceEU consists of several initiatives, including an amendment to the CRMA regulation and other forthcoming legislation. The action plan also mobilises €3 billion in funding for the coming year, which will support industrial projects in raw materials.
Financing. The €3 billion comes from existing programmes and the EIB, which will be disbursed as grants or guarantees through the following instruments: InvestEU, Battery booster, Innovation Fund, EDIP, Horizon Europe, and Global Gateway.
A financing hub will be set up to coordinate this funding, to provide technical assistance and to accelerate project development.
On 3 December, the European Commission already announced that it was releasing €250 million in partnership with the EIB for two strategic raw materials projects in Greenland (molybdenum) and Germany (lithium).
CRM centre. The action plan published on Wednesday 3 December also provides for the establishment, from 2026, of a centre for critical raw materials (CRM centre), which will be “the hub for Europe’s supply of critical raw materials”, in the words of the European Commissioner for Industrial Strategy, Stéphane Séjourné.
This centre will have to assess critical needs in real time and provide the European Commission and Member States with an operational vision. It will also aim to coordinate funding and strategic actions at both European and national level. The CRM centre’s remit also includes group purchases that the European Commission wants to make, as well as storage.
Group purchasing and storage. As previously announced, the Commission wants to be able to aggregate the demand that Member States have for raw materials, as it did previously for vaccines during the Covid-19 crisis. In addition, the aim is to facilitate the storage of these goods in order to anticipate supply shortages.
Recently, Chinese restrictions on rare earths have caused serious problems for European manufacturers. “In October, companies sometimes had less than two weeks of private stock”, explained Stéphane Séjourné.
In his view, the responsibility for both storage and for diversifying supply lies with companies, which must make a commitment to this. This is why the proposed amendment to the CRMA regulation includes actions to be taken by “large companies” using critical raw materials to limit situations of dependency. Stéphane Séjourné assured us that it would not be a question of adding reporting for these companies.
Ensuring the availability of recycled materials in the EU. Less than 1% of rare earths are currently recycled in the EU. However, the potential for recycling and producing permanent magnets from waste is enormous, according to the European Commission. And this is why it has announced that it will introduce restrictions on exports of permanent magnet waste in the second quarter of 2026 “following an in-depth assessment” and “targeted measures” on aluminium waste. It mentions the case of copper, which could also be subject to restrictions, if necessary.
When asked about the legal basis for these restrictions, the European Commissioner for Trade, Maroš Šefčovič, said that this had yet to be determined: “We will hold a public consultation, a call for evidence, all to be launched in December and then we will decide how to achieve the targets that have been set”.
See the RESourceEU communication: https://aeur.eu/f/jta (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)