Europe’s green, digital, and industrial transitions depend on secure and resilient access to Critical Raw Materials (CRMs). But while the policy framework is now largely in place, the challenge increasingly lies in implementation.
To contribute to this discussion, a group of Horizon Europe projects active across the CRM value chain have jointly published a new policy brief and accompanying policy paper examining the barriers, bottlenecks, and practical conditions needed to translate CRMA ambitions into industrial delivery.
The newly released policy brief, “Unlocking Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) in Europe: From CRMA Targets to Industrial Delivery,” highlights a key conclusion emerging from stakeholder discussions and survey input across industry, research, and policy: the main threat to achieving the CRMA 2030 targets is not resource scarcity, but delayed scale-up, fragmented governance, financing gaps, permitting uncertainty, and implementation bottlenecks.
📄 Read the policy brief:
Unlocking Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) in Europe: From CRMA Targets to Industrial Delivery
The brief outlines several priority areas requiring urgent action, including:
- De-risking industrial scale-up and first-of-a-kind plants
- Strengthening regulatory coherence and enabling circular CRM flows
- Improving permitting predictability and implementation capacity
- Enhancing transparency and traceability across CRM value chains
- Embedding early and meaningful community engagement
The publication builds on discussions held during the Raw Materials Week 2025 side event “Crossroads of Innovation: Shared Challenges and Joint Solutions in Raw Materials,” bringing together perspectives from across the European CRM ecosystem, including mining and industrial companies, SMEs, research organisations, universities, civil society actors, consultancies, and policy stakeholders.
For readers interested in a deeper analysis, the accompanying policy paper explores the structural bottlenecks affecting Europe’s CRM ambitions in greater detail, including financing constraints, fragmented regulation, exploration capacity, recycling challenges, and geopolitical dependencies.
📘 Read the policy paper:
Unlocking Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) in Europe: Bottlenecks, Challenges, and Prospective Priorities
This joint effort was developed through collaboration between several Horizon Europe projects working across the CRM value chain, including REESOURCE, AVANTIS, BLOOM, PERMANET, PERSEPHONE, REEPRODUCE, REMHub, REPTiS, RESQTOOL, START, and SUPREEMO.
Together, these initiatives aim to support resilient, sustainable, and socially responsible CRM value chains in Europe — helping bridge the gap between policy ambition and industrial implementation.
