The EU aluminium industry in a world in upheaval: key risks and opportunities

The EU downstream aluminium sector, comprising 70% of the industry’s annual turnover and 92% of its workforce, faces significant challenges:

• Slow recovery / no growth;
• High energy prices;
• High price for raw materials;
• The foreclosure of 65% of EU smelters in the last 20 years;
• The constant need for primary aluminium, despite robust recycling;
• Decrease of consumption of aluminium semis;
• Additional costs from binding climate and decarbonisation objectives, such as the CBAM;
• The unpredictability of the new US administration and the risk of new tariffs.

However, opportunities are present as well, and FACE has recommendations to safeguard the competitiveness of the European aluminium industry, support its role in the green transition, and ensure the sector remains a vital part of Europe’s industrial future:

1. EU import tariffs on unwrought aluminium should be abolished;
2. Keeping primary aluminium production through a) supporting economic stimulus tools, such as an IRA-style EU investment, rather than the penalizing CBAM, and b) supporting civil nuclear energy;
3. Encouraging secondary aluminium production through appropriate support schemes other than customs duties;
4. Strengthening our strategic resilience and maintaining all our supplies of low carbon aluminium;
5. The Letta and Draghi reports must be translated into assertive action and “radical change”;
6. Improving the competitiveness of the whole EU aluminium value chain: we need to reindustrialise to decarbonise. This is the equation of our Green Competitiveness;
7. Improving policy-making: all EU policies and decisions should go through ex ante and ex post impact assessments and trade policy should be at the service of industrial policy.

Find here our presentation “The EU aluminium industry in a world in upheaval: key risks and opportunities”