EU agrees deal to reinforce supply of critical raw materials

Further pressure has been applied to Europe’s risk and insurance management community to keep on top of their supply chain exposures, as the European Council (EC) and European Parliament reached a deal on the Critical Raw Materials Act that is designed to secure a sustainable and ethical supply of raw materials in Europe. The agreement is provisional, pending formal adoption in both legislative chambers. The political agreement keeps the overall objectives of the original proposal but strengthens several elements, explained the EC. It adds aluminium to the list of strategic and critical materials, reinforces the benchmark for recycling, clarifies the procedure to permit strategic projects, and requires relevant companies to perform a supply-chain risk assessment on sourcing strategic raw materials. “Today’s agreement lays the foundation of Europe’s strategic autonomy. Our dependency on raw materials is the Achilles’ heel of our competitiveness, but with the Critical Raw Material Act we can turn this weakness into strength. We can create a truly European extracting sector; we can turn our waste into a resource; we can build closer ties to third countries, and we can secure the lifeline of our industry in a truly sustainable way,” said Teresa Ribera Rodríguez, acting Spanish third vice-president and minister for the ecological transition and the demographic challenge. The EC’s proposed regulation establishes a list of 34 critical raw materials and sets targets to increase the EU’s development of these substances. To achieve this, the proposal calls for a quick and simplified permit procedure for strategic extracting projects that will be dealt with by a single national contact point. It also calls for risk analysis of possible dependencies, member states’ exploration plans, and higher investment in research, innovation and skills. “On the global stage, the regulation identified measures to diversify imports of critical raw materials, ensuring that not more than 65% of the Union’s consumption of each strategic raw material comes from a single third country,” said the Council and Parliament. The compromise text also adds synthetic graphite to the list of strategic raw material for a period of three years, until the Commission makes its first revision of the list. The provisional agreement keeps the benchmark for 10% of each raw material to be extracted in the EU and 40% processed in the region, but increases the benchmark for recycling to at least 25% of the EU’s annual consumption of raw materials. In addition, there should be substantial increases in recovering raw materials present in waste, said the EC. And there will need to be careful supply chain mapping and risk assessments to keep companies in line with the planned rules. “Large companies exposed to shortages of strategic raw materials in strategic technologies (ie battery manufacturers, hydrogen producers, renewable energy generators, data transmission and storage, or aircraft production) will have to regularly carry out a risk assessment of their supply chain of strategic raw materials, which they may present to their board of directors, mapping where the materials come from, what can affect their supply and what are the vulnerabilities to supply disruptions,” said the EC.

EU agrees deal to reinforce supply of critical raw materials

Risk managers must carry out regular risk assessments under proposed Act

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Want to read this article?

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