Leading human rights and environmental organisations are calling on European policymakers to ensure the upcoming Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) - a draft of which was released on 16 March 2023 by the European Commission - does not come at the cost of increased risks of human rights violations and environmental destruction and result in replacing current dependency on fossil fuels, with another. A just transition for Europe means ensuring human rights and the environment are protected in the Act, as well as introducing systemic measures that decrease demand for newly extracted minerals.

On 9 February, 12 environmental organisations sent an open letter to the President of the European Commission, European Commissioners, as well as to the Swedish Presidency of Council of the European Union, urging them to ensure the CRMA upholds environmental standards, establishes secondary raw materials targets and a measurement of the environmental impacts of imported or domestically mined minerals.

On 27 February, 11 human rights and environmental organisations called on EU decision-makers to establish strong human rights and environmental safeguards and a robust corporate accountability framework as well as to ensure its sourcing of minerals outside of its borders is done in an equitable manner and does not restrict the capacity of its partners to develop their own value chains.

On 16 March 2023, the European Commission presented its proposal. Initial NGO reactions can be found below.