EU Commission accused of mining secrecy in scramble for raw materials
The EU adopted a Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) last May, listing minerals such as lithium and cobalt essential for electric cars and other clean energy applications, as well as digital and weapons technology.
The EU is attempting to reduce dependency on single suppliers for these - such as China and the US - with the implementation of 60 extraction projects: 47 in the EU soil and 13 outside the Union.
China's leadership in raw material extraction and production offer fierce competition to EU ambitions for production of electric vehicles and clean tech products.
MEPs Maria Ohisalo, Sara Matthieu, Majdouline Sbaï and Ana Miranda, sought information on mining projects they considered problematic
'Despite several requests by MEPs and NGOs we have not been given access or provided information about the assessments of selected or upcoming projects,' the MEPs told Euronews, adding: 'We believe that transparency in these matters is not only a legal obligation, but an integral part of institutional accountability."
Monitoring group has become an 'empty shell', claims MEP
'While the European Parliament has observer status in the CRM board, relevant information on the choice of projects has not reached us,' the French MEP Majdouline Sbaï from Les Ecologistes told Euronews.
The Critical Raw Material (CRM) board is a monitoring group (MG) within the European Parliament committee for international trade established to offer MEPs access to confidential Commission information regarding trade.
'Since the start of the mandate, at least in the CRM MG, but I would say in all the monitoring groups we followed, the Commission keeps repeating information that is already made public. These MGs have thus become empty shells,' Sbaï told Euronews.
The four MEPs sent a letter to the Commission in early May, seen by Euronews, asking access to the impact assessments of the mining projects.
In addition, they also requested the names of the independent experts who conducted the assessments to verify their impartiality, the exact geographical locations of the projects, and details on how the Commission plans to monitor their progress.
The MEPs told Euronews they received a response later in May from Kerstin Jorna, the European Commission's Director-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, which they described as vague and evasive.
Euronews reached the Commission for a comment without receiving a reply at the time of publication.
The projects
The six projects eyeballed by the MEPs are: the Mina Doade in Spain; the Barroso mining project in Portugal; the Sakatti project in Finland; another in the Allier region of France, and two outside the EU, in Serbia and New Caledonia.
Recursos Minerales de Galicia initially had its 2018 mining project for the 'Alberta I' area rejected by regional authorities in 2020. In 2024, the company resubmitted the project under the name 'Mina Doade', and it has since been approved by the European Commission under the CRM.
Another project approved by the Commission is located in protected marshlands in Viiankiaapa, Finland. The site forms part of the EU Natura 2000 network of sites designated for bird and biodiversity conservation.
'Mining does not belong to protected areas,' Finnish MEP Maria Ohisalo told Euronews, claiming that mining such an area 'destroys the very basis of nature conservation'.
A €1 billion lithium project in France's Allier region, set to be the country's largest mining operation in decades, is sparking local controversy. Over five months of public debates, residents have raised concerns about water contamination, high energy use, and chemical risks.
'Fast-tracking extraction without pursuing strategies to moderate demand for raw materials and seeking consent of local communities is a recipe for disaster,' Belgian MEP Sara Matthieu told Euronews.
Similar concerns were raised for a project in Serbia where a year ago, the Jada mining project was unblocked to become the EU's largest supplier of lithium, following strong local protests.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fashion Network
an hour ago
- Fashion Network
US, China to resume tariff talks in effort to extend truce
The Stockholm talks, led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, come right on the heels of Trump's biggest trade deal yet, with the European Union accepting a 15% tariff on its goods exports to the U.S. and agreeing to make significant EU purchases of U.S. energy and military equipment. That deal struck with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday in Scotland also calls for $600 billion in investments in the U.S. by the EU, Trump told reporters. No similar breakthrough is expected in the U.S.-China talks, but trade analysts said that another 90-day extension of a tariff and export control truce struck in mid-May was likely. An extension of that length would prevent further escalation and help create conditions for a potential meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in late October or early November. Spokespersons for the White House and U.S. Trade Representative's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on a South China Morning Post report quoting unnamed sources as saying the two sides would refrain from introducing new tariffs or take other steps that could escalate the trade war for another 90 days. Trump's administration is poised to impose new sectoral tariffs that will impact China, including on semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, ship-to-shore cranes and other products. "We're very close to a deal with China. We really sort of made a deal with China, but we'll see how that goes," Trump told reporters before his meeting with von der Leyen, providing no further details. Previous U.S.-China trade talks in Geneva and London in May and June focused on bringing U.S. and Chinese retaliatory tariffs down from triple-digit levels and restoring the flow of rare earth minerals halted by China and Nvidia's H20 AI chips and other goods halted by the United States. So far, the talks have not delved into broader economic issues. They include U.S. complaints that China's state-led, export-driven model is flooding world markets with cheap goods, and Beijing's complaints that U.S. national security export controls on tech goods seek to stunt Chinese growth. "Stockholm will be the first meaningful round of U.S.-China trade talks," said Bo Zhengyuan, Shanghai-based partner at China consultancy firm Plenum. Trump has been successful in pressuring some other trading partners, including Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, into deals accepting higher U.S. tariffs of 15% to 20%. Analysts say the U.S.-China negotiations are far more complex and will require more time. China's grip on the global market for rare earth minerals and magnets, used in everything from military hardware to car windshield wiper motors, has proved to be an effective leverage point on U.S. industries. In the background of the talks is speculation about a possible meeting between Trump and Xi in late October. Trump has said he will decide soon whether to visit China in a landmark trip to address trade and security tensions. A new flare-up of tariffs and export controls would likely derail any plans for a meeting with Xi. "The Stockholm meeting is an opportunity to start laying the groundwork for a Trump visit to China," said Wendy Cutler, vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Bessent has already said he wants to work out an extension of the August 12 deadline to prevent tariffs snapping back to 145% on the U.S. side and 125% on the Chinese side. Still, China will likely request a reduction of multi-layered U.S. tariffs totaling 55% on most goods and further easing of U.S. high-tech export controls, analysts said. Beijing has argued that such purchases would help reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China, which reached $295.5 billion in 2024. China is currently facing a 20% tariff related to the U.S. fentanyl crisis, a 10% reciprocal tariff, and 25% duties on most industrial goods imposed during Trump's first term. Bessent has also said he would discuss with He the need for China to rebalance its economy away from exports toward domestic consumer demand. The shift would require China to put an end to a protracted property crisis and boost social safety nets to encourage household spending. Michael Froman, a former U.S. trade representative during Barack Obama 's administration, said such a shift has been a goal of U.S. policymakers for two decades. "Can we effectively use tariffs to get China to fundamentally change their economic strategy? That remains to be seen," said Froman, now president of the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.
Fashion Network
an hour ago
- Fashion Network
US and EU clinch deal with 15% US tariff on most EU exports to avert trade war
"We have a trade deal between the two largest economies in the world, and it's a big deal. It's a huge deal. It will bring stability. It will bring predictability," she said. The deal, which also includes $600 billion of EU investments in the United States and $750 billion of EU purchases of U.S. energy over Trump's second term, will indeed bring clarity for EU companies. Even so, the baseline 15% tariff will be seen by many in Europe as a poor outcome compared with the initial European ambition of a zero-for-zero tariff deal, although it is better than the threatened 30% rate. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz welcomed the deal, saying in a statement that a trade conflict had been averted that would have hit Germany's export-driven economy and its large auto sector hard. But Bernd Lange, the German Social Democrat who chair's the trade committee of the European Parliament, said he was "quite critical" because the tariffs were imbalanced and the pledged $600 billion of investment would likely come at the expense of EU industry. The euro rose around 0.2% against the dollar, sterling and yen within an hour of the deal's being announced. The deal mirrors key parts of the framework agreement the United States clinched with Japan last week. "We are agreeing that the tariff ... for automobiles and everything else will be a straight-across tariff of 15%," Trump said. That rate will not, however, apply to steel and aluminium, for which a 50% tariff will remain in place, although von der Leyen said it would be cut and replaced with a quota system. Von der Leyen said the rate also applied to semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, and there would be no tariffs from either side on aircraft and aircraft parts, certain chemicals, certain generic drugs, semiconductor equipment, some agricultural products, natural resources and critical raw materials. "We will keep working to add more products to this list," she said, adding that the situation on spirits was still to be established. Eric Winograd, chief economist at AllianceBernstein in New York, noted the similarity with Japan's U.S. deal. "We will need to see how long the sides stick to the deal. From a market perspective, it is reassuring in the sense that having a deal is better than not having a deal," he said. Trump, who is seeking to reorder the global economy and reduce decades-old U.S. trade deficits, has so far reeled in agreements with Britain, Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam, although his administration has failed to deliver on a promise of "90 deals in 90 days." He has periodically railed against the European Union, saying it was "formed to screw the United States" on trade. Arriving in Scotland, Trump said the EU wanted "to make a deal very badly" and said, as he met von der Leyen, that Europe had been "very unfair to the United States". His main bugbear is the U.S. merchandise trade deficit with the EU, which in 2024 reached $235 billion, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The EU points to the U.S. surplus in services, which it says partially redresses the balance. Trump also talked on Sunday about the "hundreds of billions of dollars" that tariffs were bringing in. On July 12, Trump threatened to apply a 30% tariff on imports from the EU starting on August 1, after weeks of negotiations with the major U.S. trading partners failed to reach a comprehensive trade deal. The EU had prepared countertariffs on 93 billion euros ($109 billion) of U.S. goods in the event there was no deal, and Trump had pressed ahead with 30% tariffs. Some member states had also pushed for the bloc to use its most powerful trade weapon, the anti-coercion instrument, to target U.S. services in the event of a no-deal.
France 24
an hour ago
- France 24
What we know so far about the EU-US trade deal
The stakes were high with a looming August 1 deadline and $1.9 trillion transatlantic trading relationship on the line. Many European businesses will breathe a sigh of relief after the leaders agreed the 27-country bloc will face a baseline levy of 15 percent instead of a threatened 30 percent -- but the deal will not satisfy everyone. Here is what we know so far: What did EU, US agree? Both sides confirmed there will be a 15-percent across-the-board rate on a majority of EU goods -- the same level secured by Japan this month -- with bilateral tariff exemptions on some products. The deal will bring relief for the bloc's auto sector, employing around 13 million people -- and hit by Trump with 25-percent tariffs, on top of a pre-existing 2.5 percent. "Obviously, it is good news for the car industry. So Germany will be happy. And all the EU members with auto supply chains, they go from 27.5 to 15 percent," said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute For International Economics. A 15-percent levy will remain "costly" for German automakers, "but it is manageable", said trade geopolitics expert Elvire Fabry at the Jacques Delors Institute. While 15 percent is much higher than pre-existing US tariffs on European goods -- averaging 4.8 percent -- it mirrors the status quo, with companies currently facing an additional flat rate of 10 percent imposed by Trump since April. The EU also committed to buy $750 billion of liquefied natural gas, oil and nuclear fuels from the United States -- split equally over three years -- to replace Russian energy sources. And it will pour $600 billion more in additional investments in the United States. Trump said EU countries -- which recently pledged to ramp up their defence spending within NATO -- would be purchasing "hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of military equipment". Are there exemptions? Von der Leyen said the 15-percent rate applied across most sectors, including semiconductors and pharmaceuticals -- a critical export for Ireland, which the bloc has sought to protect. Trump in April launched probes that could lead to significantly steeper tariffs on the two key sectors, warning this month he could slap 200-percent levies on drugs. Brussels and Washington agreed a bilateral tariff exemption for key goods including aircraft, certain chemicals, semiconductor equipment, certain agricultural products and critical raw materials, von der Leyen said. The EU currently faces 50-percent tariffs on its steel exports to the United States, but von der Leyen said a compromise on the metal had been reached with Trump. "Between us, tariffs will be cut and a quota system will be put in place," she said. It is understood that European steel would be hit with 50-percent levies only after a certain amount of the metal arrived in the United States, but no details were initially provided on the mechanism. What happens next? The deal needs to be approved by EU member states, whose ambassadors will meet first thing Monday morning for a debrief from the European Commission. And there are still technical talks to come, since the agreement needs to be fully fleshed out. Von der Leyen described the deal as a "framework" agreement. "Details have to be sorted out, and that will happen over the next weeks," she said. In particular, she said there has yet to be a final decision on alcohol, critical since France and The Netherlands have been pushing for carve-outs for wine and beer respectively. "This is something which has to be sorted out in the next days," von der Leyen said.
