Position paper Raw material turnaround: Requirements for a Raw Materials Act for a Social and Just Transformation

In September 2022, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a European Raw Materials Act (CRMA) in her State of the EU address. "We will work on strategic projects along the entire supply chain - from extraction to processing and recycling to finishing," she added. After a very short consultation period, the European Commission presented its proposal in March 2023. As announced by the President of the Commission, the strategic projects are at the heart of the CRMA. At the same time, they represent one of the greatest risks to environmental and human rights protection. According to the EU Commission, strategic projects inside and outside the EU should be identified and then primarily enforced over other interests - such as nature conservation. The numerous human rights risks that have been addressed in recent years by various legislations are also not adequately reflected in the law. Instead, the CRMA relies on certificates or the intention to engage in a voluntary private industrial alliance as a strategic project. This kind of acceleration risks massively undermining both environmental and health impact assessments and democratic participation processes.

More than 40 European environmental and human rights organisations have joined forces. Requirements for this Act. These include:
1. The EU should actively reduce its dependence on primary raw materials and implement demand-side solutions to reduce raw material consumption by at least 10 % by 2030. % lowering. These include the phasing out of single-use products containing critical raw materials, the introduction of a material passport system and the adoption of national programmes to promote material efficiency and the use of alternative materials.

2. The CRMA should not rely solely on certification schemes to assess the sustainability of a mining project, as certification alone is not a guarantee of compliance with binding human rights and environmental legislation. Instead, a more comprehensive assessment of human rights and environmental performance should be carried out, taking into account criteria such as multi-stakeholder governance, compliance with comprehensive standards, disclosure rules, accessible complaint mechanisms and public audit reports.

3. CRMA's focus on EU security of supply through partnerships lacks a global approach to equity and concrete actions to ensure sustainability standards, civil society participation and the protection of human rights and the environment in third countries. Recommendations include aligning partnerships with international agreements, establishing robust monitoring and remediation mechanisms, defining "added value", supporting domestic industrialisation, engaging civil society and indigenous peoples, ensuring transparency and avoiding undermining obligations through other regulations or trade agreements.

4. The CRMA’s focus on accelerating permitting procedures for critical raw material projects risks circumventing environmental and social protection measures and lacks public acceptance. This underlines the need to strike a balance between environmental protection, public participation and shortened permitting periods, while incorporating elements such as free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and indigenous peoples’ rights, reference to international instruments, allocation of resources to permitting authorities, reference to international agreements, ensuring transparency, setting up a subgroup on sustainability and responsible mining within the Committee on Critical Raw Materials and banning deep-sea mining due to possible environmental and social impacts.

5. For the success of the European Green Deal and the EU’s strategic autonomy, it is crucial to prioritise the circular economy approach in the CRMA by implementing an ambitious recycling strategy, improving coherence with the waste hierarchy, increasing the EU’s recycling capacity targets, improving the collection and separation of carbon-containing components, proposing targets for the recycling share of all carbon-containing products, including public procurement measures, and ensuring that mining waste recovery follows comprehensive rules and includes legacy recovery plans.

6. The CRMA should include comprehensive rules for calculating and verifying the environmental footprint of critical raw materials, taking into account clear criteria for determining a significant environmental footprint, taking into account the impact on the circular economy and recycling companies, international standards and sustainable practices, conducting pre-assessments and consultations with relevant stakeholders, enabling scientific advice from the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, ensuring environmental footprint declarations for all critical raw materials placed on the market, including intermediate and final products, and adopting delegated acts establishing performance classes for the environmental footprint with specific parameters.

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