STRADE addresses the long-term security and sustainability of the European raw material supply from European and non-European countries. It will develop dialogue-based, innovative policy recommendations for a European strategy on future raw-material supplies. STRADE will initially concentrate on the industry perspective. Based on an analysis of the European mineral raw-material mining sector’s competitiveness, the objective is to provide a strategy on how the EU can work to promote mining investment into and within the EU. Areas in which there is a need to revisit and improve present policies and conditions to advance European competitiveness for inward investments will be identified. STRADE also addresses equipment and service suppliers, exploration companies and investors. EU-level dialogues should be initiated with mineral-producing countries to support European businesses in these sectors within non-EU countries. These activities will also serve as a gateway to future cooperation between the EU and other raw-material-producing countries and will often address environmental challenges in the mining sector. Subsequently, STRADE will focus on government level and the EU’s relation to mineral-producing countries. Based to the mapping of present EU and member-state engagements as well as those engagements of non-EU countries, it will provide analyses on how the EU can renew its engagement with mineral-producing countries aiming at a larger EU strategy to ensure fair and unrestricted access to mineral raw materials worldwide. A specific objective towards the goals of environmental and social sustainability is the development of new concepts for Europe’s role in international action towards sustainable mining and processing. Stakeholder workshops on possible contributions of EU /member states to an international resource governance alliance and internationally accepted sustainability evaluation and certification schemes will be conducted.

In order to foster more, but sustainable mineral production in the EU, SUMEX (SUstainable Management in EXtractive industries) will establish a sustainability framework for the extractive industry in Europe. It does so by considering the Sustainable Development Goals, the European Green Deal, as well as EU Social License to Operate considerations and will involve stakeholders from industry, government, academia and civil society backgrounds from all across the EU. This framework is then applied across the extractive value chain to analyse the mineral, as well as relevant economic, environmental and social policy frameworks of the EU, member states and selected regions along five focus areas - socio-economic and environmental impact assessments, land use planning, health and safety, reporting official statistics and permitting processes/policy integration-to find, or build, where needed, good practices or tools for an open access toolkit, which will be embedded in a broader Community of Practise (CoP) and which forms the basis for capacity building. This CoP will consider relevant stakeholder groups, with a focus on permitting authorities, across the EU, providing a digital platform and using a series of workshops and webinars. In SUMEX, the experience from other projects like MINGUIDE, MINLAND, MIREU, STRADE builds a powerful foundation for addressing the challenge of how best to implement sustainability considerations into the whole raw materials value chain. What makes SUMEX stand out, is that a) it involves Andalusia as a regional partner to act as 1) a test case and 2) to involve other regions, i.e. those represented in MIREU and the OECD Mining Regions and Cities Initiative, to participate in SUMEX; as well as having access to the informal network of mining authorities and b) by employing two practical use cases, involving industry partners, for two important and completely different raw material groups – construction and battery materials.

The CEWASTE project contributes to an improved recovery of valuable and critical raw materials (CRMs) from key types of waste through traceable and sustainable treatment processes in the entire supply chain of secondary raw materials. As such, CEWASTE will address the specific challenge to secure the sustainable access to CRMs for the EU economy and objectives set by the EU action plan for the Circular Economy, the issue of illegal trade of wastes within the EU and to non-EU countries and the need to support the development of environmentally and socially sound recycling systems globally. Specifically, the project will develop, validate and launch a voluntary certification scheme for collection, transport and treatment facilities of key types of waste containing significant amounts of valuable and critical raw materials. To ensure a comprehensive approach and a robust result, the project will be developed along the following six specific objectives: Objective 1 - Understand existing recovery practice, standards and verification schemes; Objective 2 - Develop sustainability and traceability requirements; Objective 3 - Develop an assurance system and related verification procedures; Objective 4 - Validate the new voluntary scheme; Objective 5 - Ensure long term sustainability of the scheme; Objective 6 - Ensure a transparent stakeholder process.