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Questions and answers on the RESourceEU Action Plan

European Commission

Questions and answers
Dec 3, 2025
Brussels

1. Why is the Commission proposing the RESourceEU Action Plan?

Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) are vital for the EU's competitiveness, as well as for the clean energy, digital and defence sectors. The EU is still heavily dependent on imports, often coming from one single supplier.

Today, over 90% of the EU's rare earth magnets come from China. The potential consequences of this dependency have become further evident with the recent announcement of export restrictions on CRMs such as graphite, gallium, germanium and rare earths, as well as on batteries and key processing technologies.

To address such dependencies, the Commission has proposed a new RESourceEU Action Plan to speed up the diversification of supply through concrete financing, market monitoring, and risk mitigation tools.

The Plan builds on the European Critical Raw Materials Act, which sets 2030 benchmarks for EU supply security: at least 10% of annual strategic raw material consumption extracted in the EU, 40% processed, 25% recycled, and no more than 65% of any such material coming from a single country.

2. How will the RESourceEU Action Plan help reduce Europe's dependence on raw materials?

The RESourceEU Action Plan speeds up the deployment of raw material projects in Europe and in partner countries. The Commission is prioritising Strategic Projects with the potential to rapidly reduce EU dependencies.

To achieve this, the Commission is mobilising close to €3 billion in EU financing over the next 12 months for CRM projects. The Commission is also expected to propose simpler permitting for CRMs to enable rapid project roll-out while upholding EU environmental, social and governance standards.

To kick-start the implementation of the RESourceEU Action Plan, the Commission, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and Member States are unlocking financial support for two CRM projects that will promptly deliver on the EU's needs:

1. 1. Greenland Resources' Malmbjerg molybdenum project to achieve supply security for the defence sector.
   2. Vulcan's lithium extraction project in Germany, to contribute to supply of battery raw materials. The project secured €250 million of financial support from the European Investment Bank.

3. Will the RESourceEU Action Plan financially support strategically important raw materials projects?

Access to funding is a major contributing factor for the development of sustainable and secure value chains of critical raw materials. In the last years, the Commission and Member States have supported CRM projects, e.g. via the Innovation Fund or the Just Transition Fund. The InvestEU guarantee has also supported implementing partners like the EIB to finance projects. Some Member States have also started setting up dedicated CRM funds.

Despite these efforts, funding remains a major bottleneck for projects all along the critical raw materials value chain. Therefore, RESourceEU puts strong emphasis on financing and, in a whole-encompassing approach, the Commission sets up a CRM financing hub, and mobilises €3 billion from EU funds and the EIB's own resources.

The Commission will unlock support via direct support through EU grants and leverage support by channelling investments. For instance:

• InvestEU: The Commission will facilitate the mobilisation of up to €2 billion of investments on the CRM value chain.
• Battery Booster: €300 million will be dedicated to upstream raw materials projects.
• Innovation Fund: while the 2025 call will dedicate €1 billion (in 2025)to clean tech manufacturing, the 2026 call will include at least €700 million for CRM and clean tech with a focus on strengthening CRM supply chains.
• European Defence Investment Programme: will fund CRM projects in defence raw materials value chain.
• Horizon 2021-2027: up to €300 million will be mobilised to support investment in R&I.
• Projects outside the EU: The Global Gateway will support relevant projects in partner countries, ensuring that supplies will be directed towards EU offtakes.

The Commission will set clear conditions and may recover EU funds if projects do not maintain supply security. Nevertheless, the scale of the challenge requires a parallel support from national and regional administrations to maximise the impact of public interventions. Therefore, the Commission urges Member States and regions to channel up to €1 billion support from the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) to support strategically important CRM projects.

To support CRM projects in partner countries, the Commission will launch under Horizon Europe a co-funded European partnership composed of Member States and third countries to co-finance research and innovation projects along the CRM value chain.

To stimulate innovation, the Commission will launch dedicated calls under Horizon Europe of €593 million under the 2026-2027 work programme to support the optimisation of resources' uses in a circular economy and in new production processes. The European Innovation Council (EIC) will also provide for an additional EUR 50 million blended finance support through an EIC Accelerator challenge for innovative CRM projects in Europe.

5. What is the European Critical Raw Materials Centre and how will it increase Europe's resilience?

The Resource EU Action Plan is designed to protect the European CRM value chain in the long term through several strategic initiatives, with the European Critical Raw Materials Centre at its core. Set to be established in 2026, the Centre will provide strategic oversight, enabling the EU to secure access to Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) for European industries while ensuring resilience and sustainability. It will develop robust intelligence on CRM value chains and primary and secondary markets, informing EU and national strategies on investment, stockpiling, and joint purchasing. Acting as a portfolio manager, the Centre will coordinate financing and strategic actions at both EU and national levels, supporting diversification and sustainability across CRM supply chains. Through its broad mandate encompassing monitoring, joint purchasing, stockpiling, and investment, the Centre will have the capabilities to ensure Europe's long-term supply of critical raw materials.

To support the work of the Centre, the Commission has also set up a Raw Materials Mechanism under the EU Energy and Raw Materials Platform, which will act as a matchmaking tool, enabling demand aggregation and facilitating private joint purchasing of strategic raw materials. This will help connect buyers and suppliers, streamline access for SMEs, and establish offtake agreements, feeding valuable insights and practices into the Centre. Furthermore, the Commission, together with Member States will also launch a CRM stockpiling pilot to create an effective approach to raw material reserves, focusing on logistics and financing challenges to enhance industrial resilience.

6. How will the RESourceEU Action Plan support circularity and avoid scrap leakage?

Boosting circularity and recycling requires better exploiting the critical raw materials already contained in products sold in Europe. Today, the EU average collection of end-of-life products in the EU is 40%, and less than 1% of rare earth elements are recycled in the EU. With access to feedstock and incentives, the EU rare earths recyclers could cover 20% of today's demand of permanent magnets.

To address this, RESourceEU Action Plan first sets out measures to keep relevant scrap and end-of-life products in the EU to guarantee feedstock for recyclers as well as proposing measures to boost recycling of permanent magnets within the EU.

In particular, the Commission will propose, in the first half of 2026, the Commission to introduce restrictions on the export of scraps and waste of permanent magnets on the basis of a thorough assessment as well as targeted measures on aluminium scrap. Similar actions will be considered for copper scrap if this proves necessary. This work involves creating an EU-level subcode within the Combined Nomenclature and the European Waste Catalogue to identify and track permanent magnets and the end-of-life products containing them. Member States will also need to step up enforcement at external borders to prevent illicit flows. How will the RESourceEU Action Plan boost recycling of permanent magnets in the EU?

Today's Action Plan is accompanied by a targeted amendment of the CRMA to boost recycling of permanent magnets in the EU. First, the Commission proposes to extend labelling requirements on additional products to facilitate their recycling, such as hard disk drives, transducers, loudspeakers, drones for civil use, motorised toys. Furthermore, to ensure that secondary raw materials are effectively used in new products, the Commission requires that magnets in products will need to contain shares of recycled critical raw materials. Those recycled materials must come from pre-and post-consumer waste recycled inside the EU.

Beyond rare earths permanent magnets, the revision of the Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) Directive, as part of the Circular Economy Act proposal for adoption in autumn 2026, will include measures to improve the collection of end-of-life electrical and electronic equipment to enhance CRMs.

The Waste Shipment Regulation needs to enable efficient shipments of CRM waste and secondary materials within the EU. The implementation of the Regulation will allow shifting to digital procedures and "green-listing" of specific waste streams for recycling in the EU. In addition, the Commission will close loopholes which are currently leading to the export to third countries of copper or aluminium scrap presented fraudulently as products.

Lastly, the EU needs to reduce the EU dependence on fertilisers, including those made from critical raw materials. Therefore, in the second quarter of 2026, the Commission will propose an action plan to ensure the availability and affordability of domestic fertilisers, including actions to enable recycled nutrients and other alternatives to fertilisers.

7. How will the RESourceEU Action Plan accelerate raw materials diplomacy and international commitment to secure diversified supply?

The Resource EU Action Plan will accelerate raw materials diplomacy by deepening and expanding the EU's strategic partnerships with resource-rich and like-minded countries, and by strengthening cooperation in multilateral forums. The Commission, Member States and partner countries will further operationalise the already existing 15 Strategic Partnerships by accelerating support to projects in third countries through technical assistance, guarantee and blending instruments. Following the MoU with South Africa, the Commission will be launching negotiations with Brazil, too, to support joint projects, local value creation and jobs, and higher ESG, research and innovation standards along the whole value chain.

At the same time, the Plan will better integrate the EU's CRM value chain with enlargement and neighbourhood countries, including through targeted investment frameworks for Ukraine and the Western Balkans. The Commission will also enhance cooperation with Southern Neighbourhood, notably with the upcoming Action Plan of the Pact for the Mediterranean.

Internationally, the EU will leverage the G7 Roadmap for standards-based critical mineral markets to improve supply chain traceability, ESG standards, and market reliability, while exploring trade instruments, including targeted tariffs, to counter non-market practices by dominant suppliers. In addition, the Commission reinforces the EU's role in initiatives like the G20 Critical Minerals Framework and the G7 Critical Minerals Production Alliance, using these platforms to coordinate funding, improve ESG standards, map geological resources and jointly support a diversified, resilient global CRM supply chain.

8. How will the RESourceEU Action Plan support faster permitting?

Permitting delays and uncertainties remain a key challenge in the raw material project development in the EU. These inefficiencies represent a huge cost for industry. Each delay weakens investment confidence, erodes first-mover advantage, increases capex and financing costs. RESourceEU is therefore proposing measures to ensure long-term viability of EU projects by streamlining and simplifying the permit-granting process.

The CRMA puts in place streamlining and fast-tracking measures, while upkeeping high EU environmental, social and governance standards. The Resource EU Action Plan is urging Member States who have not yet done so to establish Single Point(s) of Contact, and make sure these work efficiently, to help provide clear permitting timelines and reduce risks for project promoters.

In order to improve the regulatory framework, the Commission will table a proposal on environmental permitting acceleration, which will include provisions to accelerate permitting for CRM projects.

To strengthen links between the Water Resilience Strategy and the Critical Raw Materials Act, the Commission will issue guidance in the first quarter of 2026 to support a simpler, more harmonised implementation of EU environmental permitting rules, including for mining. The guidance will clarify how Environmental Quality Standards apply at the level of the whole water body and promote easier, faster compliance. It will also confirm that the law allows natural background concentrations to be considered when assessing the chemical status of surface water.

In addition to the guidance, by the second quarter of 2026, the Commission will review and revise the Water Framework Directive, paying particular attention to the need to promote circularity and access to critical raw materials in the EU, while protecting the environment and human health.

9. What measures are foreseen to protect the integrity of the EU Single Market?

The Resource EU Action Plan will protect the Single Market and strengthen the resilience of the EU's CRM value chains through a combination of monitoring, regulatory tools, international coordination, and strategic use of the EU market. Under the Internal Market Emergency and Resilience Act (IMERA), the Commission will gather intelligence on production capacities, stocks, and supply disruptions, coordinate joint purchases, and manage stockpiling distribution across Member States, while stress-testing strategic value chains such as rare earths and defence-related CRMs.

To guard against harmful market practices, the EU must ensure foreign investment brings real added value to the Single Market and aligns with our economic security objectives. Considering the strategic nature of the CRMs value chain, the Commission will integrate the Strategic Projects as "Projects or Programmes of Union Interest" under the Foreign Direct Investment Regulation, providing increased control over foreign investment on the EU CRMs value chain on security grounds. To further safeguard strategic projects, the Commission will also restrict participation by non-reciprocal foreign entities, including Chinese-controlled entities, in EU-funded research