European Commission Directorate-General for Trade

Raw materials are the basis of a large number of industrial value chains in the EU. Specific raw materials are needed to make a wide range of industrial goods such as car engines, mobile phones or wind turbines.

EU raw materials' industry in a nutshell

• A large number of industries use raw materials as inputs, providing a total added value of €1300 billion.
• 30 million people employed in the raw materials' industrial sector
• A sustainable supply of particular raw materials is of crucial importance for the development of green technologies

EU Trade policy and raw materials

Raw materials play a significant role for the EU trade policy. In concrete terms, the European Commission developed a fully-fledged strategy for raw materials, which was outlined in the 2008 Communication entitled the Raw Materials Initiative. This was revised in February 2011 in a Communication, which further boosted the integration of raw material priorities in EU policies.

EU Trade policy is actively committed to ensure that the international raw materials markets operate in a free and transparent way. For this purpose, the EU’s trade strategy relies on three pillars:

• Definition of the rules of the game through bilateral and multilateral negotiations
• Enforcing the rules and tackling market barriers when required
• Promotion of the debate on raw materials, both in bilateral and multilateral settings.

Results on raw materials

• EU-Korea FTA includes the prohibition of duties, taxes or other fees on exportation.
• Upcoming EU-Singapore FTA includes the prohibition of duties, taxes or measures of an equivalent effect on exportation.
• EU and Central America, and Colombia/Peru trade agreements include a prohibition of export duties or taxes, with some minor exceptions.
• WTO accession Tajikistan: a commitment was secured on the prohibition of export duties or taxes, except for a list of products with bound rates.
• WTO raw materials’ cases against China: successful conclusion of the first WTO case against China’s export restrictions on 9 raw materials (bauxite, coke, fluorspar, magnesium, manganese, silicon carbide, silicon metal, yellow phosphorus and zinc) which were found in violation of WTO rules and of China’s commitments; a second case has been launched in 2012 against export restrictions applied by China on another set of products (rare earths, tungsten and molybdenum).
• Outreach and transparency work in the OECD outreach to third non-OECD countries is on-going, notably in close cooperation with the OECD.