TELF AG examines the essence of the Critical Raw Materials Act
The updated list of minerals
A few months ago, when the European Commission published the updated list of critical raw materials for European industry, many observers were somewhat surprised by the growing quantity of resources mentioned in the document. There were in fact 34 in total, 20 more than the survey which was carried out only twelve years ago. Not many people know it, but every three years the European Commission publishes the updated list of minerals and other raw materials that it considers fundamental for the industrial and sustainable development of the Eurozone, and from 2011 onwards the figure of resources of which spoke in the document has increased more and more. The most impressive increase occurred between 2014 and 2017, when the European Commission added 7 critical raw materials to the list that had been drawn up only a few years earlier.
With these lists, the European Commission intends to focus collective attention on what, in all likelihood, will represent one of the major development drivers for European countries: technological, industrial and sustainable development driven by the implementation of raw materials. The latter do not only have economic importance, but also play a role of decisive importance in the actual technological or industrial applications in which they will be used. In the European Commission’s list, in addition to the materials considered fundamental for the global energy transition (such as lithium, cobalt or copper), there are also resources such as fluorspar, hafnium and vanadium, the uses of which are still to be found out for most people.
The strategic resources identified by the European Union can be used for many purposes, but they will prove useful above all for defense, for energy technologies, for industry, and obviously also in some specific production sectors, such as the automotive sector, which it now seems well headed towards a future dominated by electric vehicles (even flying ones).
What matters, in this particular historical phase, is that the role of raw materials is taking on a decisive importance, unprecedented in history, so much so that it ends up among the top of the political agenda of an important international entity such as the Union European. Being a purely political union, the European Union has promoted the identification of critical raw materials also for another reason, namely to set an extremely ambitious objective for the near future: the intention is in fact to progressively reduce European dependence on external suppliers, committing itself to support the extraction and processing of raw materials on European soil.
It is not a question of the desire to close ourselves off from the outside world, concentrating most of the mining or extractive activities on the soil of the European Union. In Europe it has now been understood that the achievement of the sustainable objectives set for the next decades – and largely linked to the reduction of emissions thanks to certain technologies that can be produced with the support of critical raw materials – is a goal of primary importance for the international caliber of the European Union, which has every intention of playing the role of global beacon for the green transition. It is a role that it will not easily give up, and the continuous emphasis placed on the role of raw materials, and on the desire to concentrate their production on European soil, is right there to demonstrate it.
