Primary, Secondary and Circular Supply: Can Europe Build a Competitive Raw Materials System?

Europe’s raw materials future will depend on both primary extraction and secondary recovery, yet policy often treats the two as substitutes rather than complements. This session examines how mining, refining, recycling and scrap retention fit together in a realistic industrial strategy. It addresses the economics of circularity, high energy and regulatory costs, the competitiveness of recycling in Europe, and the limits of relying on secondary supply alone. The session also explores the political appeal of recycling compared with mining, and whether that distinction is obscuring the scale of the challenge. Open questions: How Europe can design a more coherent raw materials system in which extraction, processing and circularity reinforce one another rather than compete for legitimacy?