EU and US welcome new members to Minerals Security Partnership

The Commission and the United States hosted MSP Forum members in New York City on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Week and Climate Week NYC. The event was an opportunity to welcome seven new members to the MSP Forum – the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, the Philippines, Serbia, Türkiye, and Zambia. They join Argentina, Greenland, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Namibia, Peru, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, who were announced as Forum members at the inaugural high-level MSP Forum event held in July 2024. 

Discussions focused on opportunities, priorities, and challenges in responsible mining, processing, and recycling of critical minerals needed, among others, for the energy transition. The meeting was co-chaired by Maive Rute, European Commission Deputy Director-general for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship, and SMEs, and Jose W. Fernandez, U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, with participation from ministers and high-level officials from MSP Forum members. 

During the event, the new MSP Forum members expressed their priorities on the development of their critical mineral sectors, including on project development, environmental, labour, social, and governance aspects of mining, and policies related to supporting investments contributing to local value addition. Participants also discussed a roadmap for the MSP Forum’s two workstreams on project development and policy dialogue. 

Next steps

The European Commission and the United States look forward to hosting MSP Forum members for the next MSP Forum event on the margins of Raw Materials Week in Brussels in December 2024. 

Background

The MSP Forum builds on the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Package adopted in March 2023, which emphasised the need for more diverse and more sustainable CRM supply chains through new international mutually supportive partnerships, such as the CRM Club. The MSP currently has 15 partners who are automatically members of the MSP Forum (Australia, Canada, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the US and the EU) and 15 new MSP Forum Members (Argentina, Ecuador, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Dominican Republic, Greenland, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Namibia, Peru, the Philippines, Serbia, Türkiye, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Zambia).

CRMs are indispensable for a wide set of technologies needed for EU strategic sectors such as the net-zero industry, digital, space and defence. While the demand for such critical raw materials has never been higher, the supply of CRMs is confronted with rising geopolitical, environmental, and social risks and challenges, highlighting the need for greater cooperation among like-minded international partners to secure and diversify CRM supply chains. 

For more information

Launch of the MSP Forum

European Critical Raw Materials Act  

Minerals Security Partnership