Critical Raw Materials are indispensable for the EU economy and a wide set of necessary technologies for strategic sectors such as renewable energy, digital, aerospace and defence. The Critical Raw Materials Act (CRM Act) will ensure EU access to a secure and sustainable supply of critical raw materials, enabling Europe to meet its 2030 climate and digital objectives.
Critical raw materials are of high economic importance for Europe while being also highly vulnerable to supply disruptions. Critical raw materials are confronted with a growing global demand, driven by the decarbonisation of economies. For instance, EU demand for rare earth metals is expected to increase six-fold by 2030 and seven-fold by 2050, for lithium, EU demand is expected to increase twelve-fold by 2030 and twenty-one-fold by 2050. Today, Europe relies heavily on imports, often from a single third country, and recent crises have underlined EU strategic dependencies. Without joint and timely action, a well-functioning single market, resiliency and competitiveness, European industries and
EU efforts to meet its climate and digital objectives are at risk.
The European Critical Raw Materials Act is a comprehensive response to these challenges. Building on the strength of the single market, the Act will ensure that the EU can rely on strong, resilient, and sustainable value chains for critical raw materials. The Regulation will strengthen all stages of the European critical raw materials value chain, diversify the EU’s imports to reduce strategic dependencies, improve EU capacity to monitor and mitigate risks of disruptions to the supply of critical raw materials, and improve circularity and sustainability.
In addition to an updated list of critical raw materials for the whole EU economy, it lists strategic raw materials, which are those most crucial for strategic technologies used for the green, digital, defence and aerospace applications.
The Act sets these benchmarks along the strategic raw materials value chain and for the diversification of the EU supplies
The Act will reduce the administrative burden, streamlining permitting procedures for critical raw materials projects in the EU while ensuring that we keep high social and environmental protection. In addition, selected strategic projects will benefit from support for access to finance and shorter permitting timeframes (27 months for extraction permits and 15 months for processing and recycling permits). EU countries will also have to develop national programmes for exploring geological resources.
To ensure supply chain resilience, the Act creates critical raw materials supply chain monitoring and stress-testing, coordinates strategic stocks and sets risk preparedness obligation on large companies producing strategic technologies.
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