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Berlin, 14.03.2023: The EU Commission plans to bring the further processing of critical raw materials to Europe and wants to promote the massive mining of raw materials in the EU. This comes from one Draft of the Critical Raw Materials Act, which the EU Commission intends to present on Thursday, 16.3.2023 and which PowerShift is available in advance.
"Raw-rich countries are hardly mentioned in the draft", criticises Michael Reckordt, raw materials expert at PowerShift. The EU Commission had repeatedly stressed in advance that it wanted to extend supply chains to the partner countries and thus also enable value creation on the ground. With the aim of bringing 40 percent of the processing of raw materials into the EU, it is torpedoing this interest.
"Even in terms of compliance with human rights, environmental and climate standards, there is no strengthening in the draft. The acceleration of planning at many levels threatens to run counter to these standards even in the EU and jeopardises local approval of dismantling," Reckordt continued.
How the very high demand for critical raw materials could be reduced is not in the draft: For important topics such as recycling, only imprecise wishes to member states are formulated. Specifically, the draft will only be applied with regard to permanentagnete. "It is good that something is happening in this area, but this only concerns a small amount of raw materials and only a single product. There is an urgent need to set binding recycling and recyclate use quotas across the EU for further products and to finally initiate a raw material transition", demands Reckordt.
Press contacts
Michael Reckordt, raw material expert, michael.reckordt@power-shift.de, 0163 633 63 72
