Presentation short abstract

Focusing on the EU's criticality assessment and lithium, nickel, aluminium, and magnesite, this paper demonstrates how raw materials become critical, challenging the notion that the classification critical is merely technical and apolitical, by showing how it is shaped by polit-economic interests.

Presentation long abstract

In the public discourse Critical Raw Materials (CRM) are mostly equated with those raw materials essential for technologies aimed at decarbonisation. However, at the political-level, CRM designation appears to follow a technical, rule-based methodology: raw materials that exceed certain thresholds in supply risk and economic importance are classified as critical. This presents CRM classification as an objective, apolitical process.

This paper challenges this assumption by demonstrating how raw materials ‘become critical’. The category and the process is deeply embedded in a political context and shaped by power relations. Focusing on the EU's criticality assessment process, I examine four cases: lithium, nickel, aluminium, and magnesite. Each case represents different pathways to (or exclusion from) critical status. While lithium, nickel, and aluminium ‘became critical’ through distinct channels including industry lobbying, political decision-making, and trilog negotiations, magnesite's failure to ‘become critical’ reveals the strategic interests and actors that shape these classifications.

Drawing on interviews with policy and industry actors, document analysis, and analysis of the EU's criticality assessment, the research shows how the classification as CRM serve as vehicles for business and political interests and furthermore demonstrate that criticality is not simply generated through a neutral assessment but actively constructed through political negotiation and economic pressure. This matters because CRM designation unlocks substantial public resources, policy support, and regulatory advantages – with the potential to expand the resource-frontier and accompanying socio-ecological consequences.