10. Investing in Critical Raw Materials for the Clean-Tech Transition in the EU

The procurement of critical raw materials (CRM) could become a fundamental barrier to the development of clean technology and net-zero manufacturing in the EU, thus endangering the achievement of major objectives of EU self-sufficiency in the climate-energy transition. The EU policy framework includes several measures introduced in 2024 and 2025 to push both clean-tech manufacturing and security of supply of CRM in the framework of the EU Competitiveness Compass and the Clean Industrial Deal of 2025. Criticality of materials has been defined as a combination of “economic importance” and “supply risk”. On the side of “economic importance”, an increasing demand for CRM comes from net-zero energy technologies as well as from digital and military technologies. The EU shows a mixed picture in clean-tech sectors: it holds a leadership position in some areas, while in others it faces a high, and increasing, dependency on imports. Although significant investments are underway to boost manufacturing autonomy, these efforts may struggle to keep pace with rapidly rising demand and intensifying external competition, particularly from China. Therefore, the security of supply of CRM has a key role in providing robustness to EU clean-tech value chains. On the side of the ‘supply risk’, CRM have entered a phase marked by international tensions and conflicts, exposing the EU’s high dependency on exporting countries that can quickly become unreliable. Responses and strategies include diversifying the portfolio of supplier countries, expanding domestic mining within the EU, increasing recycling efforts, and investing in research and innovation. All these approaches face distinct barriers, varying degrees of feasibility, and different implementation timeframes. The first consequence of the 2024 CRM policies has been the approval of forty-seven “strategic projects” within the EU and thirteen outside the EU. It is important that these projects are matched by additional investments in clean-tech manufacturing to keep a balanced development across the whole EU domestic value chain for the energy transition. However, a fundamental uncertainty now surrounds the CRM issue, at both the EU and global scale.