EFG Webinar: EU Strategy to Secure Access to Mineral Raw Materials
On 8 April 2021, EFG organised the webinar ‘EU Strategy to Secure Access to Mineral Raw Materials’.
EFG President Marko Komac was the host of the webinar. Vitor Correia, Past President of EFG and Secretary-General of the International Raw Materials Observatory was the presenter.
The EU recently launched the European Raw Material Alliance, a partnership between industry players, EU countries and regions, trade unions, civil society, research and technology organisations, investors and NGOs to ‘reduce Europe’s dependency on third countries, diversifying supply from both primary and secondary sources and improving resource efficiency and circularity while promoting responsible sourcing worldwide’.
This signals an evident concern from policymakers on the European industry dependency on raw materials imports from third countries.
There are two good reasons for this concern:
- Delivering the European Green Deal would require vast quantities of mineral raw materials;
- Resources nationalism is rising (even inside the EU), alongside the international rivalry to securing access to mineral raw materials.
In this context, would the EU exercise of “soft power”, applying the principles of cooperation, inclusiveness, transparency and respect of trade and competition rules, be sufficient to meet the European demand for mineral raw materials? This was the central question addressed in the talk.