1ST ANNUAL CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS EVENT

More than 200 stakeholders from the raw materials community attended the 1 ST ANNUAL CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS Event held in Brussels on 7th November 2017.

Co-organised by the European Commission and the Horizon 2020 project SCRREEN , together with PLATIRUS (GA 730224)CHROMIC (GA 730471)EQUINOX (GA 689510), , INREP (GA 641864) AND SCALE (GA 730105), it took place in the framework of the  Raw Materials Week 2017 in parallel to the Advanced Mining Countries Conference on Responsible Mining and Sourcing, starting with a joint plenary session.

CRM event

Image of Emma Goosey with organisers of the event (representatives of CHROMIC, EQUINOX, INREP, SCRREEN and SCALE).

At its 2nd edition, the Raw Materials Week is considered the most important forum to discuss about raw materials policies, international cooperation, framework conditions, technologies and sharing knowledge. This year the first Annual Critical Raw Materials Event was inaugurated and opened by Antti Peltomäki, Deputy Director General, Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW).

In the morning a more general session about EU policies and networking was held. The second session focused on EU actions on CRM, providing update about latest EU activities in the field of Critical Raw Materials. Emma Goosey from TECNALIA presented the PLATIRUS project. Then Mr Stéphane Bourg presented the action that SCREEN has been deploying in terms of networking, permanent dialogue between stakeholders and decision-making in the field of raw materials. In addition Mr Stéphane Bourg (SCRREEN), Ms Liesbeth Horckmans (VITO) representing CHROMIC project, Mr Panagiotis Kavouras (NTUA) on behalf of EQUINOX project, Mr Thymis Balomenos (NTUA) in representation of SCALE project and Mr Duncan Allsopp (University of Bath) from INREP project gained the floor presenting R&D activities in the field of CRM, highlighting best practices and methodologies.

The event reached the conclusions by centering the debate around how the EU is supporting actions on CRM.