ROMA (ITALPRESS) – The Minister of Enterprises and Made in Italy, sen. Adolfo Urso, met in Venice the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy, Stephane Sejourné, with which he carried out an inspection in the harbour and retroportuale area of Porto Marghera. The visit is part of the work of deepening conducted by Mimit – together with the other ministries involved – on the possible role of the logistic and industrial system of the North East in the within of the Italian candidacy to host one of the first European hubs of strategic storage of the critical raw materials previewed from the CRM Act of the EU.
“Italy is in the field with a system project to strengthen its role in the new chains of European value,” said Minister Urso. “For geographical location, infrastructure and manufacturing force, North-East can be a strategic gateway to critical raw materials needed for the European industry, ensuring fast and safe supply to the productive heart of the continent. In this framework Porto Marghera, together with other sites, represents a natural logistics and industrial platform, inserted in an ecosystem already active in recycling, transformation and new technological chains. It is on this system capacity that Italy intends to contribute to the security of supply and to European industrial autonomy,” he concluded.
“European sovereignty over critical raw materials is not only built through objectives: it is built with concrete actions,” said Vice-President Séjourné. “The Italian candidacy with the pilot project – he added – is a particularly interesting initiative, because it puts national infrastructure and skills at the service of the whole of Europe”. “The coalition of the voluntarians, of which Italy is a part, is already a fundamental stage in order to permanently root our policy of independence, resilience and solidarity in the field of critical raw materials,” he concluded.
The Italian candidacy, built as a system proposal, enhances Porto Marghera and other logistic and industrial assets of the North East, including the Port of Trieste, the Port of Ravenna, the Interporto European di Verona and the dolomia di Tassullo mine, in Val di Non. A strategic backbone placed at the crossroads of the main European corridors TEN-T and at the service of one of the strongest productive areas of Europe: the North East, which in 2025 expressed almost 200 billion euros of exports, with skills already present in the logistics of complex materials, industrial chemistry, recycling and new technological chains.
The meeting today follows the technical mission conducted last month in the Marghera area by experts from the European Commission competent for critical raw materials and energy industries, which allowed a first operational study on potentially eligible sites. The visit will continue in the afternoon of today with a similar nickname of Minister Urso and Executive Vice-President Séjourné in the area of the Interporto ‘Quadrante Europa’ of Verona.
The Italian proposal is part of the strategy started from the beginning of the legislation to strengthen European security on critical raw materials, articulated along three directions: strategic storage at the service of European companies; recycling, recovery and reprocessing of rare lands, precious minerals and critical materials already present in the industrial cycles; partnership with allied countries and strategic partners with mineral resources, also through the involvement of the great Italian industrial realities active in the energy and infrastructure sectors.
In this context, the Italian request to the European Commission, which Minister Urso today reiterated to the Executive Vice-President Séjourné, to avoid export to third countries of industrial waste containing strategic materials, so that they can be treated and valued directly in Europe. A line consistent with the growing role of Italian companies in the recovery and transformation of critical raw materials, a sector where a significant part of the already selected national projects or candidates under the Critical Raw Materials Act is concentrated.
These elements strengthen the position of the Venetian site within a multi-site proposal that aims to make Italy a European platform for the security of supply, the recovery of critical raw materials and the strengthening of strategic industrial chains of the continent.
– Mimit press office photos –
(ITALPRESS).
