On 8th and 9th May, 2017, the conference ‘EU-Latin America Dialogue on Raw Materials: consolidating the co-operation’ was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was attended by over 50 high-level delegates from Latin American countries, the European Commission, Geological Surveys, international organisations, and European projects. It was the last of a series of conferences in the frame of the EU-Latin America Policy Dialogue on Raw Materials, after the ones held in Lima, Peru (2014), Cartagena de Indias, Colombia (2015) and Santiago, Chile (2016). The ‘Dialogue’, aiming at improving cooperation on raw materials between the European Union and Latin American countries, has focused on cooperation in investment, technology, research and innovation and exchange of good practices on good governance between the two sides of the Atlantic. The Buenos Aires conference subject was on expanding the opportunities for multilateral investments through the new Mineral Development Network Platform; sharing tangible solutions for promptly meeting the increased standards for sustainable mining practices; highlighting the EU companies’ mining expertise and bolster business opportunities. During the conference, participants shared mineral policies best practices. The Secretary General of EuroGeoSurveys gave a speech on ‘Towards a World Forum on Raw Materials’, where he discussed the FORAM project, explaining how the project is organized and the future developments. In particular, he invited the participants not yet involved to become partners of the FORAM Stakeholders Network. The speech raised a big deal of attention, and the European Commission later sent to all participants the information for joining the...

On the 28th and 29th of June 2016 the ‘Exchange of best practices on mining policies and technologies’ event hosted by the European Commission (DG GROW) took place at the Hotel Metropole, in Brussels. The challenges for the mining sector in the current state of the global economy and commodity prices (economic issues, investment, innovation, readjustments both from governments and industry, etc.) as well as the mining waste management and the ongoing EU actions on international co-operation on raw materials were discussed among several other topics.  Speakers from all over the world: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and the US participated. Mrs Lowri Evans, the Director-General from DG GROW, welcomed the attendees with a very engaging speech mentioning President Juncker’s plans about Horizon 2020: “We use this research innovation program to bring together partners from around the globe with 600 million euro committed to 28 successful projects on raw material  before 2020. ”and: “In our technologies projects the program is wide enough to cover the entire value chain of raw materials and our projects are developing very interesting aspects (…) to try to unlock new innovative solutions.” Finally, she ended her speech by saying: ”The more we are approaching things in an intimated way the better we are able to help the mining industry, deliver what we need for the European economy, for the global economy and for the benefit of people”. The President of the EuroGeoSurveys, Mr. Koen Verbruggen, pointed out the contribution of the European Geological Surveys (EGS) that are all together  dealing with the geoscience challenges. He underlined the importance of the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on raw materials:” We are trying to match these needs to progress these issues on technologies to deal with challenges with the EU funding...