Policy and Supply Corridors
Active
Scope
- Implementation of the EU Critical Raw Materials Act
- European industrial responses to the US Inflation Reduction Act
- Global Gateway and the Lobito Corridor (DRC, Zambia, Angola)
- Partnerships with producing countries, and their perspectives
Europe has set strict decarbonisation targets but relies on others for most of the metals they require. This hub studies the policies meant to close that gap and the partnerships that link Europe to the regions where those metals are mined.
Cobalt comes overwhelmingly from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For that reason the perspectives of producing countries are part of the hub’s work from the start, not an afterthought. Because the hub publishes on the Lobito Corridor, its work follows the rules set out on the independence and transparency page.
Key questions, and what the evidence says so far
Short answers drawn only from the sources listed under each one, checked on 7 October 2026. The hub’s publications will go further.
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Where does implementation of the Critical Raw Materials Act fall short of its own objectives, and why?
In a report published in February 2026, the European Court of Auditors found that the 2030 benchmarks are non-binding and lack justification, and that the underlying data are not robust. Most Strategic Projects were at an early stage when they were selected in 2025, which makes it “highly unlikely” that they contribute meaningfully by 2030; the Act provides no EU funding for them; and by November 2025 the Commission had launched only two calls for projects. Efforts to diversify imports had yet to produce tangible results, and recycling lags: of 26 raw materials needed for the energy transition, 10, including lithium and gallium, are not recycled at all.
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How can Europe respond to the Inflation Reduction Act without fragmenting its single market?
The EU’s main answer so far has been more room for state aid. The Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework of March 2023 allowed Member States, in exceptional cases, to match the aid a company could receive for an equivalent investment outside Europe. To protect the single market, national authorities had to verify that the aid carried no risk of relocation within the single market, and matching aid was limited to assisted regions or to cross-border projects in at least three Member States. In June 2025 the Commission replaced it with the Clean Industrial Deal State Aid Framework. The Court of Auditors notes that the Critical Raw Materials Act itself provides no EU funding for Strategic Projects, and that in July 2025 the Commission proposed a European Competitiveness Fund that would include funding for them. The US side has also moved: a law of 4 July 2025 ended the IRA’s clean vehicle credits for vehicles acquired after 30 September 2025.
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What do partnerships such as the Lobito Corridor offer the DRC, Zambia and Angola, and on whose terms?
The corridor links the port of Lobito in Angola to Katanga in the DRC and the Copperbelt in Zambia. In October 2023 the EU and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding with the three countries, the African Development Bank and the Africa Finance Corporation to develop it. The EU’s flagship project for the corridor covers a new railway between Zambia and Angola, the rehabilitation of the DRC rail segment and the upgrading of the Angolan line, together with measures on trade, agriculture, renewable energy, training, jobs and critical raw material value chains. The existing Angolan line is run by the Lobito Atlantic Railway, a consortium of Trafigura, Mota-Engil and Vecturis that won a 30-year concession in 2022. In December 2025 the US Development Finance Corporation ($553 million) and the Development Bank of Southern Africa ($200 million) signed loans to it.
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How can EU partnerships keep more processing and value in producing countries?
The Act gives one lever: a project in an emerging market or developing economy can become a Strategic Project only if it is “mutually beneficial for the Union and the third country concerned by adding value in that third country”. Of the 13 projects outside the EU selected in June 2025, four include processing in the host country or territory: cobalt in Zambia, nickel and cobalt in Brazil, nickel in New Caledonia, and graphite in Norway and Greenland. Between 2021 and June 2025 the EU also concluded 14 raw-materials partnerships, including with the DRC, Zambia and Namibia, intended to build integrated value chains rather than only extraction. The Court of Auditors finds that they improve cooperation but contribute little to secure supply so far: only six of the roadmaps set implementation deadlines, and their effect on supply is not assessed.