Briefing

EU CRM Centre: How to secure critical minerals

Emily Ritchey — September 4, 2026

How to deliver resilient critical raw material supply chains, vital for Europe’s clean tech, with investment, partnerships and industrial policy.

Lead author

Emily Ritchey

Policy Manager, Supply Chains Brussels (EU)

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Briefing

The EU is heavily dependent on imports of raw materials and is failing to catch up with investments globally. At the same time, the recent energy crisis has highlighted the need to avoid new dependencies on critical raw materials. The future CRM centre, supported by robust industrial policy and building on work in Member States, must provide real financial power to deliver on raw materials projects and secure resilient, sustainable supply chains for Europe.

Despite numerous attempts and good intentions, the EU’s efforts so far to secure access to Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) and deliver progress on the ground have had mixed results. If done right, the CRM centre can change that. What is needed is a whole-of-government approach, an independent mandate and pooled financial resources, as well as the tools to be able to deploy this money effectively. Australia, Canada, Japan and the US are all doing this already. It’s time for the EU to catch-up.

This is why the CRM Centre should go a lot further than mere coordination and stockpiling. It should become the financial arm of a sustainable European mineral diplomacy, steer and support national investments, coordinate the work of development banks and export credit agencies and aggregate offtake. This requires a proper budget that should come primarily from the European Competitiveness Fund and the Global Europe Instrument.

Key recommendations

1

The CRM Centre should bring together different EU mineral funding pots under one European CRM investment strategy. This should include dedicated funding from both the future European Competitiveness Fund and the Global Europe instrument under the EU budget, as well as support from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
2

The Centre should have the independent mandate and financial power to invest in projects across the value chain, from mining to recycling. This should include a range of tools, namely equity, loans and price support mechanisms e.g. Contracts for Difference or offtake support. Focusing solely on stockpiling and coordination isn’t sufficient.
3

The CRM centre should adopt a whole-of-government approach to deliver projects more quickly. This means coordinating and facilitating conversations across Member States, development finance institutions, Export Credit Agencies (ECA) and other financial institutions to provide more coherent and competitive support, and direct investments towards clean projects abroad. It should provide financial support and technical assistance to steer national project deals.
4

The CRM Investment Hub should work as a “Minvest EU” and be able to aggregate offtake contracts. This should operate as an all-in hub that unites mining companies through to offtakers to accelerate deals and de-risk projects.
5

The Centre should act as the EU’s financial arm to support its mineral diplomacy - securing investments within partnerships, steering national investments to identified projects. It should also work in close coordination with G7 partners.
6

Investment in projects should promote high standards, e.g. by requiring IRMA self assessment, as well as by promoting project partnerships with EU leaders in cleaner mining, and recycling technologies.
7

The Centre must ensure traceability of black mass and monitor leakage of critical raw materials from the EU, combined with measures to address material leakage.