We present to you the third edition of the Raw Materials Scoreboard, 2021.
When the European Commission published its European Green Deal at the end of 2019, it made very clear that raw materials are key enablers of the EU’s twin green and digital transition. They are at the heart of our industrial ecosystems. Wood, stone, clay make up our houses, we are transported around the world in steel and aluminium, and half the periodic system goes into a smart phone. The supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as increasing trade and geopolitical tensions, have called our renewed attention to the vulnerabilities thatexist in value chains relevant to the EU’s security, sustainability, and strategic interests.
The European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials conceived the Raw Materials Scoreboard as a tool to monitor the field and the competitiveness of the specific EU industry. In creating it, we have widened the knowledge on raw materials. It enables the European Commission to increase the EU economy’s resilience and ability to withstand shocks by basing its policies on solid evidence. It helps us to address the need to decouple economic growth fromresource use and to identify opportunities to boost the circular economy.
This knowledge also provides the foundation of the increasingly important work on foresight, which helps to identify trends and generate likely scenarios and models. With these, we can chart our path for the transition to a digital, carbon-neutral economy, and anticipate and mitigate future risks. As Member States of the European Union are designing their recovery plans from the Covid-19 crisis, they could also benefit from the knowledge presented here.
The Raw Materials Scoreboard looks at the wide range of raw materials we use and provides insights into this complex topic. It discusses issues relating to our supply of raw materials, from domestic, global, and secondary sources. Raw materials can also play a decisive role in achieving the sustainable development goals, and this publication therefore takes a closer look at their economic, environmental and social dimension. All throughout, it becomes clear that these issues are deeply interconnected.
The Directorate-General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs and the Joint Research Centre have a long history of close collaboration in the field of raw materials. From research to foresight, from the assessment of critical raw materials to circular economy, and on the now three editions of the Raw Materials Scoreboard, our services have fruitfully and successfully worked together to increase intelligence and make the knowledge on raw materials accessible to the public.
We are pleased to present to you the third edition of the Raw Materials Scoreboard. It is the last update in this mandate of the European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials. Priorities and perspectives change over time in its parent organisation, and so they will inevitably for the Raw Materials Scoreboard. Together with you, we look forward to its future.
Stephen Quest
Director-General Joint Research Centre
Kerstin Jorna
Director-General DG Internal Market,
Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs
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