The year 2024 issue of the Bulletin Mineral Resources is published in a year that brought significant changes in the field of mineral resources in Europe. The crisis at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine directly and violently confirmed the long-standing warnings of the mineral resource’s experts, how sensible is the stability of the supply of certain raw materials, especially those that are absolutely necessary to achieve the set goals of the green and digital transition. The supply chain crisis did not come as a surprise to the profession. Europe imports most of these important raw materials from only a few countries in the world. To reduce the unacceptable risk posed by such a high dependence of the development of advanced technologies, the European Union adopted two important regulations in 2024 (CRMA and NZIA). The implementation of the regulations, especially the CRMA, will stimulate new large-scale geological research as well as enable the development of potential projects for the extraction and processing of critical mineral resources in the European Union and in strategic partner countries with high ethical standards. The implementation of both regulations will boost the progress in geological, mining and related professions in the coming years and decades.

The Geological Survey of Slovenia is ready to take over the tasks that the regulation directly or indirectly imposes on national geological organizations. In addition, GeoZS supports the implementation of CRMA through a large European project within Horizon Europe – the establishment of the Geological Service for Europe (GSEU), within the framework of which, among other things, it is responsible for the establishment of the European International Center of Excellence for Sustainable Resource Management (EU ICE SRM). Even though the GSEU program was prepared and started to be implemented before the adoption of the CRMA, it is to a large extent calibrated to pan-European support for the supply of (critical) raw materials. In support of CRMA implementation, the EU ICE SRM in establishment, organized training for United Nations Resource Classification experts – UNFC (Train the trainer), who will be able to spread this knowledge needed for the implementation of the regulation further in their countries.

It is clear that the green and digital transition and many new carbon-free technologies will not happen without certain raw materials. The need for these raw materials will increase drastically in the coming years. Without new deposits and extraction areas for these critical raw materials, there will be no technological progress either. All this represents the basis for the revival of the geological and mining profession in Europe and a new era of development of geological research and mining technologies.

The Slovenian and European profession is ready for a revival, and we look forward to the middle of 2025, when, in accordance with the request of CRMA, Slovenia as well as other EU member states will start implementing national research programs for the general research on critical raw materials and minerals carriers of critical raw materials.

Ljubljana, September 2024

dr. Miloš Bavec
Director of GeoZS

• Bulletin (PDF, 17MB)