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Recent EU policy initiatives, including the Steel and Metals Action Plan and the RESourceEU initiative, underline the urgent need to strengthen Europe’s strategic autonomy in critical and strategic raw materials—essential for the EU’s competitiveness, clean energy and digital transitions, and defence.

As the European Commission prepares its forthcoming Circular Economy Act, this high-level event will explore how circularity—particularly through e-waste recycling—can contribute to securing Europe’s supply of these materials.

E-waste represents one of the EU’s most accessible and underutilized sources of critical and strategic raw materials. Copper, a strategic raw material and the backbone of electrification, is ubiquitous in e-waste streams. At the same time, e-waste recycling enables the recovery of a wide range of other valuable materials, including zinc, nickel, tin, lead, precious metals and platinum group metals, many of which are also on the EU’s critical raw materials list and are essential for clean technologies, digital applications and industrial value chains.

Alongside domestic mining and imports from reliable partner countries, recycling has a key role to play in strengthening Europe’s raw material resilience. However, this potential remains underexploited. Recycling of e-waste and critical raw materials in the EU continues to face structural barriers, including fragmented implementation of EU waste legislation, complex and burdensome waste shipment procedures, insufficient collection rates, and rising energy and carbon costs that undermine the business case for recycling.

This discussion therefore comes at a critical moment. The upcoming Circular Economy Act is expected to introduce measures to strengthen circular value chains, improve resource efficiency, and enhance access to strategic raw materials through recycling.

In this context, the event will explore how EU policy can create an enabling framework for e-waste recycling and CRM circularity in Europe, supporting investment, improving material recovery, and contributing to Europe’s strategic autonomy.

Key questions:

• How can the Circular Economy Act strengthen circular value chains for strategic raw materials such as copper?
• What concrete measures are needed to increase the collection and high-quality recycling of e-waste in the EU?
• How can EU waste legislation be streamlined to facilitate recycling while maintaining high environmental standards?
• What policy tools are needed to ensure a viable business case for recycling in Europe, including in the context of energy and carbon costs?
• How can recycling contribute to strengthening Europe’s strategic autonomy in raw materials?

Sponsored by: International Copper Association
Media Partner: Euractiv