DOI: 10.11118/978-80-7701-042-9-0101

THE ROLE OF CIRCULAR ECONOMY IN THE EU’S STRATEGY FOR CRITICAL RAW MATERIALS

Gábor Papp¹, Róbert Magda²

¹ John von Neumann University Doctoral School of Management and Business Administration, Infopark sétány 1., Budapest, Hungary

² John von Neumann University, H-6000 Kecskemét, Izsáki u.10., Hungary; Vanderbijlpark Campus, North-West University, Vanderbijlpark 1900, South Africa

Circular economy is becoming an increasingly important part of the EU’s strategy related to critical raw materials, because the green transition has become an increasingly important geopolitical factor. Meanwhile, the EU is lacking some critical raw materials which are indispensable to produce the devices enabling the green transition. In this case recycling could emerge as a key tool to enable higher availability of these elements as secondary raw materials. The problem is however, that many of these elements currently have a very low end-of-life recycling ratios. This is especially true regarding rare earth elements, with one of their particularly important field of use, the permanent magnets. Finally, future demands which are hard to be predicted only make planning even more difficult.

Klíčová slova: European Green Deal, green transition, circular economy, rare earth elements, permanent magnets

stránky: 101-102, online: 2025