– the oral question to the Commission on ‘Securing Europe’s supply of rare earth elements’, by Mrs Ek, Mr Panayotov, Mrs Hall, Mrs de Sarnez, Mr Rinaldi, Mrs Schaake and Mr Theurer, on behalf of the ALDE Group (O-000043/2011 – B7-0020/2011), and

At the end of 2010, a working party was set up between the EU and China to facilitate the dialogue on issues relating to rare earths and other raw materials.

On the request of the European Parliament the Commission launched a call for seeking professional support to establish the European Rare-Earth Competency Network (ERECON), a network that should bring together experts from Europe's universities, research institutes, policy-makers, think tanks, industry and experts from outside the EU in order to advance exchange of best-practice on REE, increase the understanding of the special properties of REE, make recommendations on research and promote the sustainable mining, recyclability and substitution of REE.

Funding has been provided to projects on advanced underground technologies for intelligent mining, on substitution of critical raw materials such as rare earths and platinum group metals, and on coordination of activities in Member States in the area of industrial handling of raw materials through ERA-NET.

Within Europe, the Commission is looking at encouraging research on substitutability, namely into novel materials for replacement of strategic or scarce raw materials such as for example platinum metals and rare earths.

2. Liquid uranium metal handling systems for molten uranium or uranium alloys, consisting of crucibles, made of or protected by suitable corrosion and heat resistant materials (e.g. tantalum, yttria-coated graphite, graphite coated with other rare earth oxides or mixtures thereof), and cooling equipment for the crucibles;