The EU Commission has selected 46 new Strategic Projects across 16 EU member states with a view to strengthening EU supply chains and diversifying sources of critical raw materials.
The projects will contribute to benchmarks in the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) that by 2030 EU capacity meets at least 10% of the EU’s annual consumption for extraction, 40% for processing, and 25% for recycling of strategic raw materials to enhance competitiveness, develop greater resilience and be less dependent on any single supplier.
The new Strategic Projects are located in Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, and Sweden. The projects cover different stages of the raw materials value chain: eight are on extraction, 11 on processing, and 19 are recycling projects. In addition, there are eight integrated projects: three that combine extraction and processing, and five that combine processing and recycling, supporting the EU’s integrated value chain approach. The projects cover 15 of the 17 strategic raw materials under the CRMA.
The projects, which will strengthen European value chains in batteries, defence and aerospace and permanent magnets, include seven projects on lithium, 12 on nickel, 10 on cobalt, five on manganese, and four on graphite, all of which support the EU battery value chain. The two projects on magnesium and three on tungsten will contribute to defence and aerospace, while the four projects on rare earth elements will support the permanent magnet value chain.
The 46 projects are expected to make a significant contribution to achieving the EU’s CRM derisking and diversification targets. They could fully meet the extraction benchmarks for lithium, nickel, rare earth elements, magnesium and tungsten, and the processing benchmarks for lithium and rare earth elements. They could also cover 89% of the processing benchmark for cobalt and 57% and 51% for tungsten and magnesium respectively, while fully meeting the recycling benchmarks for lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements.
With the RESourceEU communication from December last year, the EU is accelerating and amplifying its efforts. Since the launch of RESourceEU, Team Europe has mobilised more than €2 billion in financial support that has been committed through the Innovation Fund, State aid, and the European Investment Bank. Several projects have made significant progress towards securing offtake agreements. In addition, the Raw Materials Mechanism, established to aggregate demand and supply and identify potential offtakers, has generated more than 30 matches for 10 materials.
