Brussels selects seven projects in Spain to increase strategic raw materials | Economy
The European Commission selected the first 47 strategic projects on Tuesday to “promote the skills of strategic raw materials” in Europe, of which Seven are in Spain, Especially in Extremadura and Andalusia. With these privileged projects, which will benefit from accelerated processes and “favorable” financing conditions, Brussels tries to increase the extraction and processing of minerals such as lithium, cobalt or nickel.
These are fundamental materials for the production of electric cars batteries, the impulse of renewable energy or the defense industry that the union now tries to strengthen and accelerate, but from which the twenty -one Seven have an excessive external dependence, in particular China. Something that, with the increasingly unstable international geopolitical panorama, the EU wants to correct now.
“Europe currently depends on third countries for many of the critical materials you need most. We must increase our production, diversify our external offer and make collapses,” said the vice -president of the Commission for prosperity and industrial strategy, Stéphane Séjourné.
“We have to extract more and open more mines in Europe and we must also transform more and recycle as much more,” said the outstanding task of the EU a Avoid being so excessively dependent on extra countries -community.
The first 47 projects now identified, of 170 presented in the framework of the law on critical issues approved just under a year ago, try to guarantee the supply of critical materials, a “milestone of European sovereignty as an industrial power”, said French.
Three of the projects selected in Spain are in Extramedura: it is the Agublanca project in Monestirio (Badajoz), the only one in Spain that extracts nickel, in addition to copper; The Lithium Iberia Company Sustainable Lithium Mineratory project in Las Navas (Cáceres) and the P6 Metals project of the Iberian resources of Spain based in Almoharín, also in Cáceres. They are flanked by the circular copper extraction project, based in Huelva; the Copper Las Cruces Mine (Seville); The lithium mine from loads in Galicia and the Wolframium El Moto in Ciudad Real.
With the exception of the Agublanca project, which is a reserve in favor of the state, the elaboration of Spanish projects is in the hands of autonomous communities, which are those that have the skills in extraction and environmental evaluation.
In total, the 47 selected projects are found in 13 Member States: in addition to Spain, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Poland and Romania.
