Raw Materials Mining in Europe: Responsible, Necessary and Ready to deliver

Euromines publishes its Manifesto for the European Commission 2024-2029

Read the full Manifesto: Euromines Manifesto 2024-2029

Mining in Europe: A fundamental building block of the sustainable transition

Europe is at a critical junction, one with significant impacts on its ability to achieve its Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) targets, key enablers of the twin sustainability and digital transition.

One path leads to dependency, meaning abandoning Europe’s mining industry in favour of high imports, less Environmental Social Governance (ESG) compliance, low strategic autonomy and diminished resilience.

The other path leads to embracing 20-30 new strategic mining projects in Europe by 2030. It leads to a sustainable and prosperous European mining industry which delivers on reinforced strategic autonomy, with ESG aligned with European values.

This manifesto sets out an actionable pathway to reconcile Europe’s huge and ever-growing raw materials needs with its ambition to increase strategic resilience. We outline the upcoming regulatory framework decisions and focus-points that Europe must address, and with urgency, to maintain and nurture a sustainable and prosperous European mining industry.

3 ways to strengthen Europe’s raw materials supply:

Euromines, the European Association of Mining Industries, Metal Ores & Industrial Minerals urges European Commission to acknowledge three ways to strengthen Europe’s raw materials supply:

• Licence to Operate: Enabling and Maintaining know-how and operations in the EU;
• Growing and investing: ensuring competitiveness;
• Being responsible: Recognising operational excellence.

6 steps to Europe’s Resilience

In order to achieve the goals of the Critical Raw Materials Act, and allow the ambition of the EU Green Deal transformation to materialize, Euromines urges the European Commission to apply six steps to Europe’s resilience

Step 1:  Getting things done – an Executive Vice-President for Europe’s industrial transition and investments;

Step 2: Establishing the base – An EU ‘Industry Deal’ to provide a business case to the Green Deal;

Step 3: ‘Think raw materials’ – check the EU legislation on raw materials needs via efficient impact assessments;

Step 4: An industry-centric climate and environmental review to balance competing priorities;

Step 5: Competitive framework conditions and targeted state aid to bridge the gap and build the infrastructure for industrial transition;

Step 6: Funding and access to finance – €350bn per year up to 2030 needed for the climate transition