To address these looming shortages in critical metals, including five of the 15 rare earth metals—dysprosium, terbium, ytterbium, neodymium, and europium—governments around the world, as well as research organizations and companies around the world, focus their efforts on three main areas: recycling of the existing products; developing substitute materials that would allow the minimization of the use of rare earth metals, so perhaps eliminating rare earth metals from some of the technologies; and diversifying the existing supply sources.

73. Welcomes the work on RM and sustainability in the OECD, G8 and G20 and stresses the further need for a G20 dialogue on RM in order to develop a common perspective; further welcomes the will of G8 and G20 members to fight RM price volatility and calls for the development of concrete measures to curb speculation in that field; calls on the Commission to promote the work of the OECD on the impact of export restrictions and their use as a policy tool; supports the inclusion of non-OECD members in these discussions; calls for the creation of strategic cooperation between the EU, US and Japan on CRM towards a ‘global RM watch’ by sharing demand and supply data, common forecasting, encouraging the exchange of ...[+++]best practice, technological know-how and patents, analysing supply chains, investigating the possibility for joint strategic stocks and the establishment of joint RD projects; takes the view that such issues should be part of the agenda of the next EU-US Summits; calls on the Commission to promote Track-II diplomacy on RM by supporting the exchange of non-governmental organisations, academia and think-tanks from the EU and other resource-relevant countries; calls on the Commission to organise regular events, such as JOGMEC's ‘Metal Saloons’ on RM with other resource-relevant countries; further asks the Commission to investigate the feasibility of an international statistics initiative on CRM based on the example of the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI), as well as whether an international covenant for metals might be a useful tool; calls on the European Defence Agency to contribute, in accordance with Article 42(3) of the TEU, to the identification of measures to strengthen the industrial and technological base of the defence sector with regard to RM;

—Precious metals (gold, silver, the platinum group, but not mercury)

B1150Precious metals and alloy wastes (gold, silver, the platinum group, but not mercury) in a dispersible, non-liquid form with appropriate packaging and labelling

Umicore is a Belgian-based group of companies active in the supply of copper and zinc, the production of added value products based on precious metals, and the provision of recycling services for the recovery of precious metals from various industrial by-products and recyclable materials.

The European Commission has approved the acquisition by Umicore, the Belgian precious metals and advanced materials group, of the precious metals division of the US company OMG.