FACE calls on the EU Institutions and Governments to adopt the proposals of En+/Rusal Manifesto

FACE calls on the EU Institutions and Governments to adopt the proposals of En +/ Rusal Manifesto

The initiatives included in the “Green Aluminium Vision” will support the aluminium industry recovery after the COVID-19 crisis

FACE welcomes the EN+/RUSAL ‘Green Aluminium Vision’, setting out the Group’s commitments to lead the industry into the low carbon economy by developing a new asset class of ‘Green Aluminium’.

The proposal presented by Lord Barker, EN+ Executive Chairman, is calling out for a low carbon ‘green’ aluminium to spur EU’s green Covid-19 recovery package and climate transition strategy, giving global need for sustainable development that must exclude non-market subsidies giving way for high-carbon capacity increase.

The EN+ Group ambitious “Green Aluminium Vision” advocates in particular for the smart use of EU  trade policy in support of competitiveness and sustainability. Current EU import tariffs on unwrought aluminium are inefficient, confusing and counter-productive;  customs codes applied to unwrought aluminium, by not differentiating in any way the different types of metal, heavily damage EU aluminium end users. And with an import tariff structure on primary aluminium, for which the EU is in a massive and growing deficit, the European trade policy not only has failed to avoid the delocalisation of smelters from the old continent, but did not encourage the flow of quality primary metal into the EU, while generating artificial extra costs over € 1 billion per year that heavily penalises EU downstream aluminium transformers, who represent more than 90% of the jobs in the European aluminium industry.

FACE welcomes the proposal in the Green Aluminium Vision to create separate custom codes for low carbon metal and to review import tariffs of low carbon primary metal, that is surely a first measure to immediately support the competitiveness and the sustainability of the aluminium industry.

Since its foundation, FACE has always advocated for a strategic partnership with champions of cleaner technologies and production of the primary metal necessary for the downstream companies: Rusal on the one hand, and the producers in the Arab Gulf States on the other.

Only in this way, it will be possible to support the European downstream industry recovery, and to reduce the EU’s dependence on high-carbon aluminium, incompatible with the European ambitions on climate and environment and with our industry’s efforts to position aluminium as the preferred environment-friendly and climate-resilient material in the XXIst century.

Click here to download this press release

Click here to download the Manifesto “Green Aluminium Vision”