Blood on the Green Deal: how the EU Critical Raw Materials Act became a battle between the climate and the arms industry

Publicly presented as a climate-friendly legislation, the CRM Act has turned into an “open bar” for the weapons industry, which has actively lobbied to make sure that the metals they profit from enjoy the same public support and environmental deregulations as those that are genuinely useful for the climate transition.

A joint report by the Observatoire des Multinationales in Paris and Corporate Europe Observatory in Brussels documents how the aerospace and defence industries and their allies in the European Commission and in member states’ capitals have been successfully lobbying to ensure new mines will soon be opened to build weapons. In particular, the defence and aerospace sectors have made sure that the official EU list of critical minerals would indeed include aluminium and titanium, two metals that are essential to their interests but of limited use (especially titanium) for the climate transition.

“The CRM Act will not make our economy greener, but will undoubtedly make a killing for an industry involved in exporting weapons across the world", says Bram Vranken, researcher from Corporate Europe Observatory and expert on the EU defence lobby.

And Lora Verheecke, researcher from the Observatoire des Multinationales, adds that “before the law is adopted, we need a real political discussion about European consumption of critical raw materials.”

Arms should be excluded from this usage, she says.