GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

Actions should push the EU to the forefront of a safer, more sustainable and intelligent extraction of mineral resources through the deployment of technologies such as electrification of ground and underground mobility, remote controlling, automation or autonomous processes with a particular focus on historic mine sites and deep deposits. Actions should develop sustainable solutions through industrial and user-driven multidisciplinary consortia covering the relevant mining and processing value chains and technologies. Actions should facilitate the market uptake of solutions developed through industrially- and user-driven multidisciplinary consortia covering the relevant value chain and should consider standardisation aspects when relevant.

Proposals should target minerals and metals and can address individual elements of the raw materials value chain or the value chain as a whole, and should provide quantitative measures of the progress beyond the state of the art. Proposals are also required to seek end user involvement to drive the research with their requirements and test the developed solutions, with a clear path to the exploitation of the results.

Actions should justify the relevance of selected pilot demonstrations in different locations within the EU (and also outside if there is a clear added value for the EU economy, industry and society). The action should also contribute to improving the awareness of relevant external stakeholders and the general public across the EU about the importance of raw materials for society, the challenges related to their supply within the EU and about proposed solutions which could help to improve society’s acceptance of and trust in sustainable raw materials production in the EU.