Challenges and Opportunities: The Future of Critical Raw Material Recovery and African Partnership

European battery recycling has reached a critical juncture where an environmental obligation has definitively transformed into an unavoidable geoeconomic imperative for the industry. Sarah Logan’s latest, data-driven analysis as a Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) highlights that the European Union is significantly lagging behind in recovering critical minerals.

This severe disadvantage directly threatens the continent’s long-term energy security and industrial competitiveness on the global market. Relying strictly on available facts and precise quantitative data, this article thoroughly examines current European capacity shortages, complex regulatory hurdles, and the immense economic and logistical potential embedded in strategic partnerships with African nations.

The Current State and the European Union’s Severe Lag

Rapidly scaling up the sector is absolutely essential, as the European Commission’s Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) has set an extremely ambitious legislative target: by 2030, at least 25% of the EU’s annual consumption of strategic raw materials must be strictly sourced from secondary waste processing. Despite this clear directive, the continent is currently making very little progress.

A recent and comprehensive report by the European Court of Auditors indicates that 7 out of 26 critical minerals directly related to the energy transition have dismal recovery rates, hovering between a mere 1% and 5% within the EU. Translated into practical industrial terms, this means that Europe is currently recovering only 3 tonnes for every 100 tonnes of natural graphite contained in power cells.

The situation is even more alarming for ten other strategic minerals—including lithium, gallium, and silicon metal—which are currently not processed or recovered at all. Experts continuously argue that industrial domestic processing would lower dependence on Chinese supply chains much faster and far more effectively than enduring the lengthy permit processes required for developing new mining operations.

The Legal and Feedstock Supply Challenges of European Battery Recycling

A highly crucial factor for the future feedstock supply is the continent’s leading global role in electric vehicle (EV) adoption. In Sweden, EVs currently account for an impressive 58% of all passenger vehicle sales, followed by Denmark at 56% and the Netherlands at 48%. Across the entire European Union, fully electric vehicles comprise 22.6% of newly registered cars.

While this widespread adoption should theoretically guarantee a solid and abundant supply of raw materials, the recently altered regulatory framework has introduced severe logistical hurdles. In March 2025, the EU officially re-classified “black mass“—the shredded EV waste containing high concentrations of valuable minerals—as well as end-of-life lithium, nickel, and zinc-based cells as “hazardous waste”.

This new strict classification entirely prohibits the export of black mass to non-OECD countries and demands rigorous prior notification and consent for any shipments moving within the EU and OECD borders. Current data shows that Europe exports approximately 80% of its generated black mass for refining elsewhere—predominantly to Asia, specifically to South Korea, which offers significantly cheaper industrial capacities while retaining OECD status.

While this strict reclassification aims to prevent strategic material leakage outside Europe, it severely paralyzes the ability to efficiently transport materials across the internal market and aggregate the massive volumes needed for profitable domestic processing.

Capacity Shortages, Drastic Cost Disadvantages, and Innovation Efforts

While there has been some minor, localized growth in the pre-treatment and shredding phase, the actual material recovery and chemical refining capacity is drastically falling behind global competitors. Based on robust 2025 data, China’s dominant market share in both the shredding and the crucial material recovery stages exceeded 80% globally, a near-monopoly that forecasts suggest will remain for the long term.

In stark contrast, the EU’s active hydrometallurgical capacity currently stands at less than 3,000 tonnes—shockingly representing roughly one-sixtieth of China’s processing volume. Industry estimates strongly suggest that the Union will urgently need the built infrastructure to process between 120,000 and 135,000 tonnes of black mass annually by 2030 just to meet basic demands.

The economic barriers are clearly illustrated by the fact that the costs of complex hydrometallurgical procedures for nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) units are 70% higher, and for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) units 67% higher in France than in China. This steep inflation is driven by significantly higher European labor, energy, transportation, and environmental compliance costs.

On a highly positive note, however, 2026 witnessed a massive 103% growth in patent filings related to the sector. This innovative push is heavily led by ambitious European companies such as Belgium’s Umicore, Germany’s Cylib and Tozero, and Norway’s Hydrovolt, all racing to optimize new technologies.

Proposed Solutions: Export Bans, Public Funding, and African Cooperation

To ensure the long-term economic viability and profitability of European battery recycling, immediate and highly decisive political and economic steps are strictly required. The ECFR analysis thoroughly outlines three primary strategic actions for policymakers.

First, significantly stricter export restrictions on black mass must be implemented—similar to the decisive actions taken by the United States in July 2026, when President Donald Trump empowered federal officials to completely block the export of domestic e-waste. Second, the domestic refining infrastructure must be urgently and massively expanded using robust public and EU-level funding.

Third, targeted financial mechanisms—such as embedding the processing costs into the initial purchase price of goods—must be utilized to directly offset the structural operational disadvantages faced by European actors. Beyond fixing the internal market, establishing deep partnerships with African countries is geostrategically vital. Nations like Namibia and Kenya possess excellent transport corridors and abundant, untapped renewable energy resources, making them ideal partners to cost-effectively power energy-intensive facilities.

This international cooperation would also mutually benefit Africa by directly addressing its rapidly surging e-waste problem: Sub-Saharan Africa’s stationary storage capacity is precisely projected to grow from the current 11 GWh to 83 GWh by 2030, and could leap up to 190 GWh if universal electricity access (SDG7) is successfully achieved. An EU-Africa partnership would create thousands of jobs, lower processing costs, and heavily accelerate Europe’s necessary independence from the Chinese raw material monopoly.

Sources:

• Original Article: ECFR – Power up: How EU-Africa cooperation can drive Europe’s battery recycling future

• Official EU Background: European Commission – European Critical Raw Materials Act