The EU Commission has presented the Critical Raw Materials Act to promote the mining and recycling of 18 strategically important raw materials. The right approach to securing Europe's future?

Sven Astheimer

Editor responsible for corporate reporting.

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The European Union has thus laid the foundation for a systematic approach to the issue of raw material security. The plan contains the right building blocks and basically has the potential to improve the security of supply of some critical raw materials. At the moment, Europe's dependence on a few producers and supplier countries is considerable, especially in the area of raw materials for the expansion of electromobility but also renewable energies, and even dramatic in the area of the further processing of these raw materials, the so-called "refining". However, Europe is 20 years too late compared to other regions. The People's Republic of China, but now also Canada and now also the USA are far ahead here. And they are all competing for the same strategically important raw material deposits in countries such as Argentina, Indonesia, Congo or Gabon. No one should therefore expect that the precarious situation of Europe's security of raw material supply will change in the next five to ten years. Unfortunately, it is precisely the period for which we expect the most critical period of lack of security of supply, because the demand for the materials identified by the EU will increase most dramatically, especially during this period. Europe's prosperity is therefore at stake. To put it bluntly: What good are battery factories for Europe if they are empty because Europe lacks the raw materials?

Is the high battery demand due to electromobility the driver?

Also, but the strategic dilemma of raw material security goes much further: platinum and palladium are also on the list, without them there are no catalysts and no significant production of hydrogen, without fluorine spar no semiconductor industry and without rare earths no electric motors. However, the biggest concerns in Europe are battery materials such as cobalt, manganese, phosphate, nickel and lithium, the raw materials for the production of hydrogen and rare earths for permanent magnets in electric cars and wind turbines. But also in the area of so-called niche elements such as germanium in sensors for autonomous cars, vanadium for stationary energy storage or gallium for light-emitting diodes and solar cells, the EU should introduce concrete measures to secure the supply of raw materials. There is a great deal of room for improvement here.

The Commission's plan envisages reducing ten percent of the demand itself. Is this even feasible at a competitive cost?