Regulation (EU) 2024/1252 establishing a framework for ensuring a secure and sustainable supply of critical raw materials

What it is

to lay down a regulatory framework to support the development of domestic capacities and strengthen sustainability and circularity of the critical raw material supply chains in the EU. PROPOSED ACT: Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council. ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: the European Parliament decides in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure and on an equal footing with the Council. BACKGROUND: raw materials are found at the beginning of all industrial value chains. The focus of this draft Regulation is on non-energy, non-agricultural raw materials that are important for the EU economy, the supplies of which are subject to a high level of supply risk. These critical raw materials (CRMs) are often indispensable inputs for a wide set of strategic sectors including renewable energy, the digital industry, the space and defence sectors and the health sector. At the same time, extraction and processing of CRMs can have negative environmental impacts, depending on the methods and processes used, as well as social impacts. The European Parliament adopted by 515 votes to 34, with 28 abstentions, amendments to the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a framework for ensuring a secure and sustainable supply of critical raw materials and amending Regulations (EU) 168/2013, (EU) 2018/858, 2018/1724 and (EU) 2019/1020. The matter was referred back to the committee responsible for inter-institutional negotiations. The general objective of this Regulation is to improve the functioning of the internal market by establishing a framework to ensure the internationally competitive, secure, resilient and sustainable supply of critical raw materials of the Union, including by fostering sustainability, efficiency and circularity throughout the value chain. To achieve the general objective, this Regulation aims to strengthen the different stages of the strategic raw materials value chain with the aim to ensure that, by 2030, Union capacities for each strategic raw material have significantly increased so that, overall, Union capacity approaches or reaches the following benchmarks: - Union extraction capacity is able to extract the ores, minerals or concentrates needed to produce at least 10% of the Union's annual consumption of strategic raw materials, to the extent that the Union’s reserves allow for this; - Union processing capacity , including for all intermediate processing steps, is able to produce at least 50% of the Union's annual consumption of strategic raw materials; up to 20% of the Union’s new processing capacity might be developed under strategic partnerships in emerging markets and developing countries; - Union recycling capacity , including for all intermediate recycling steps, is able to produce at least +10% volume of recycling capacity based on the 2020-2022 baseline for each strategic raw material to, at least collect, sort and process 45% of each strategic raw material contained in the Union’s waste taking into account technical and economic feasibility. - diversify the Union's imports of strategic raw materials and decrease dependency on non-reliable…

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