The legal pushback against Europe’s critical minerals rush

The European Union is racing to secure access to so-called ‘critical minerals’, including lithium, nickel, and rare earths, which it considers essential for sectors such as energy, defence, artificial intelligence (AI), and the automotive industry. Under the 2024 Critical Raw Materials Act(opens in new window) (CRMA), the European Commission can designate selected mining, processing, and recycling projects as ‘Strategic Projects(opens in new window) ’ (SPs), granting them priority treatment, accelerated permitting procedures, and easier access to financing.

The EU presents(opens in new window) this framework as necessary to support its climate and industrial policies. However, civil society organisations (CSOs) warn(opens in new window) that the CRMA’s fast-track approach risks weakening environmental safeguards, limiting public scrutiny, and treating affected communities’ rights as obstacles to Europe’s resource strategy. Communities and CSOs have pointed to this happening across several Strategic Projects and have triggered the first wave of legal challenges before the European Commission. Far from isolated disputes, these cases expose key tensions embedded in the EU’s critical minerals strategy: the push to accelerate extraction, close down decision-making, and reduce scrutiny in the name of competitiveness and security of supply.

This article draws on conversations with lawyers, activists, and organisations involved in the first legal challenges to Strategic Projects under the CRMA. With the deadline for the second round of applications now closed, we explore what these early cases reveal about the EU’s emerging critical minerals framework and the main barriers that communities and CSOs face in challenging them. And we offer practical lessons for those seeking to challenge future Strategic Projects designations. Further details on the methodology used for this article are available here.

The first contested Strategic Projects

The Commission published its first list of 47 Strategic Projects within the EU(opens in new window) in March 2025, followed by 13 outside the EU(opens in new window) in June 2025. Within the EU, this designation means that a project is considered to serve the public interest, granting it fast-tracked procedures and greater weight vis-à-vis other interests at stake (for example, environmental and community). For projects outside the EU, the designation does not carry the same legal effect(opens in new window) (that is, it does not identify them as of public interest). Still, EU recognition may encourage host countries to prioritise them.

This first round of designations(opens in new window) has already led to legal challenges. CSOs have filed Requests for Internal Review (RIRs)(opens in new window) before the European Commission to contest 16 projects within the EU and two projects outside the EU.

RIRs are currently the main EU-level mechanism for challenging Strategic Project designations under the CRMA. They allow eligible organisations to ask the Commission to reconsider whether a decision complies with EU environmental law. An RIR does not, by itself, stop a project. However, it is often a necessary procedural step before organisations can bring a case before the General Court of the European Union.

To illustrate the different legal, social, and environmental concerns emerging from the first wave of challenges to Strategic Project designations, we focus on contested projects in four jurisdictions: Spain (the Doade, Las Naves, La Parrilla, Aguablanca, Las Cruces y El Moto cases) ₁ , Portugal (the Barroso case) ₂ , Norway (the Nussir case) ₃ , and Serbia (the Jadar case) ₄ .

The RIRs for each of the above cases are available here: Spain(opens in new window) ; Portugal(opens in new window) ; Norway(opens in new window) ; Serbia(opens in new window) . As the Norway and Serbia cases demonstrate, projects located outside the EU can be challenged through partnerships with EU-based organisations.

Although the Commission has rejected all RIRs submitted to date, interviewees consistently described the procedure as a critical step within broader legal and advocacy strategies. As Stephanie Roth, part of a network coordinating legal interventions related to critical minerals projects, explained: “If you do not file, you cannot win. And even if you do not win immediately, you learn, you create precedents, and you make future action easier.”

Key barriers and lessons from early challenges: RIRs in practice

Across the cases analysed, organisations faced a mix of legal, procedural, financial, and practical barriers. Here we highlight the main challenges interviewees identified and the practical steps they took to navigate them.

Tight timelines and limited preparation time

Organisations have only eight weeks from the designation of a project as strategic to prepare and submit an RIR.

According to interviewees, the short time frame often means that organisations need to start preparatory work before projects are formally announced and, therefore, before all the necessary information is available. The tight deadline is not just a logistical challenge. It operates within an unequal system. Several interviewees argued that project promoters are more closely involved in the designation process and have ample time to prepare submissions and shape the information considered by the Commission.

ClientEarth described how local communities have “no input” and “no formal process” to influence Strategic Project designations, while the extent of project promoters’ behind-the-scenes involvement remains unclear. In the Barroso case, this meant that “the local population is [not] recognised as an equal partner in this conversation”.

Several organisations that filed an RIR were not starting from scratch. They had already engaged with the projects through prior advocacy, community mobilisation, or national legal proceedings. In addition, organisations shared and used templates, legal arguments(opens in new window) , and supporting materials across cases, enabling them to adapt existing work to their specific contexts.

For Stephanie Roth, the strength of collaboration throughout the RIR process lay in the informal exchange between organisations: “We are reacting to the same act or administrative decision, any work on the topic is replicable and scalable. This makes collaboration much more efficient, as we can share the work and learn from each other and amend and adjust”.

This collective foundation has since grown stronger. RIRs filed against previously designated Strategic Projects are now publicly available(opens in new window) , providing a concrete starting point for future challenges and helping organisations avoid duplicating work under tight deadlines. The Commission’s responses to the RIRs discussed in this article are available here: Spain(opens in new window) ; Portugal(opens in new window) ; Norway(opens in new window) ; Serbia(opens in new window) . A complementary detailed legal analysis is available here(opens in new window) .

Limited access to key information

Key project information is not made available when it is most needed. This is arguably the most critical constraint.

A recurring concern among interviewees was the lack of access to information during the preparatory stage of an RIR. In practice, organisations have been expected to file an RIR without access to the following(opens in new window) (among other) information:

• the full project application submitted by promoters;
• the assessments carried out by the Commission’s independent experts;
• the Commission’s reasoning regarding compliance with sustainability criteria under the CRMA.

According to interviewees, this lack of access to complete information around project designation means that legal challenges must be built and presented without knowing exactly how the projects were selected, raising concerns about fairness and compliance with EU legal standards.

Joám Evans of Ecologistas en Acción(opens in new window) , Spain, framed this process as an inequality of arms: “We are going in completely blind … At no point have either the Commission or the different states wanted to give us access to this information.”

Simon Simanovski, formerly with Green Legal Impact(opens in new window) , and now with Rechtsanwälte Günther(opens in new window) , made a similar point, noting that organisations often do not know the full factual basis of the decision they are challenging.

And ClientEarth describes it as “very hard to challenge a decision that you don’t know the reasoning for”.

This lack of information is especially problematic because the Commission presents its assessment as preliminary, while much of the subsequent scrutiny occurs at the member state level. Several interviewees argued that the Commission’s broad margin of discretion at the designation stage makes decisions on Strategic Projects particularly difficult to challenge immediately after approval.

As Helene Sofie Smit, involved in the Nussir case, explained, local activists repeatedly tried to understand how the project had been designated as a Strategic Project. She recalled that the Commission’s answer was, in essence, that it trusted the mining company, and the Aarhus Convention(opens in new window) did not open up for questions about Indigenous rights.

Recent documents published by Table Briefings(opens in new window) based on leaked Commission materials reinforce these concerns. They suggest that several projects not included in the preliminary list of Strategic Projects were later added to the final list following additional member state feedback. These reportedly include some of the contested projects in Spain, Portugal, and Serbia. As MiningWatch Portugal’s analysis(opens in new window) shows, this further reinforces concerns about transparency, political influence, and the lack of clear, project-specific reasoning in the CRMA designation process.

Organisations have responded by combining RIRs with access-to-information(opens in new window) requests at both the EU and national levels to build the record, create leverage, and prepare possible follow-up litigation.

Joám Evans emphasised the importance of seeking information at the national level as early as possible: “It is crucial that the organisations ask national authorities now for the key documents concerning the exchange of information with Brussels.”

Similarly, Stephanie Roth stressed that even refusals of access-to-information requests can be useful as they help prove the lack of transparency and strengthen later legal or advocacy arguments.

Filing an access-to-information request is therefore part of the wider legal strategy.

The limits of RIRs: managing expectations and acting strategically

EU-level procedures can be valuable, but only if expectations are managed from the outset.

The RIR is an administrative procedure, not a court case. It can be a useful legal tool, but it has clear limits. It is meant to review compliance with EU environmental law rather than stop projects directly. Even if a later challenge before the General Court succeeds, the likely outcome is not that the project is halted, but that the Commission is required to reconsider its decision on the Strategic Project designation.

As Stephanie Roth stressed, “The request for internal review is not the solution. It is the step that opens the way to litigation.”

The RIR’s limitations make the strategic use of legal tools essential. Organisations need to carefully decide where the RIR fits into the broader strategy: whether to act at the EU level, focus on national litigation, or combine both. The right approach depends on context, available resources, alliances, and community mobilisation.

In many cases, interviewees saw national and local proceedings as the places where projects are most likely to be delayed, changed, or stopped since permits are granted there and decisions have more immediate effects. EU-level action was generally described as one component of a broader strategy aimed at legal accountability, political pressure, and public scrutiny.

There is no single strategic approach. In Spain, for example, Ecologistas en Acción decided to group six projects into a single RIR to make the process more manageable and to highlight broader systemic concerns in parallel with national litigation. Nonetheless, it was clear where they considered change would come from.

Joám Evans explained where he believed decisive outcomes would occur: “Projects will be stopped on the ground … not … in Brussels.”

Simon Simanovski expressed a similar view: “The core should remain environmental litigation where the project is located. And then everything else — CRMA, financing, supply chain approaches — should be add-ons.”

In Norway, Natur og Ungdom(opens in new window) chose not to pursue litigation beyond the RIR, focusing instead on other forms of intervention. For Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen and Helene Sofie Smit, involved in the Nussir case, further litigation was not necessarily the strongest route: “We don’t have that much confidence in navigating the legal framework ourselves. What we are better at is mobilising public attention, raising awareness and pushing politically.”

EU policy impacts globally without equal access to accountability mechanisms

The reach and effects of the EU’s Strategic Project designation extend beyond EU borders. However, communities affected by projects outside the EU face additional barriers when seeking access to EU-level accountability mechanisms. RIRs can be submitted only by eligible organisations based within the EU. This lack of direct access for third-country actors raises broader questions about the so-called ‘Brussels effect’: EU rules shape projects far beyond the EU’s borders, but the ability to challenge EU decisions does not extend in the same way.

For Simon Simanovski, the Jadar case raises a central question for future project designations outside the EU: “What level of scrutiny does the Commission have to apply with regard to third-country projects?” In his view, the Commission currently appears to treat third-country projects much like EU projects, without explaining how it verifies sustainability, participation, and human rights safeguards where EU permitting procedures and member state oversight do not apply.

Communities and organisations outside the EU can access EU procedures through partnerships with EU-based organisations. One example is the Jadar mining project in Serbia, for which two organisations, one Romanian and the other German, jointly submitted the RIR, creating a form of indirect access to EU mechanisms for Serbian civil society. The same happened with the Nussir project in Norway, where Friends of the Earth Europe filed the RIR.

Stephanie Roth highlighted this issue as one of access to justice: “European law has impacts outside Europe, but people outside Europe are often not recognised as having standing to challenge those decisions. So they have to rely on solidarity from organisations based in Europe.”

Simon Simanovski characterised this as a form of procedural inequality embedded in the system: “I think in substantive law we often see colonialism very clearly, but in procedural law less so. This is a good example of that.”

Escalation to EU courts: complex and financially uncertain

Besides the legal complexity, there is a lack of clarity around potential adverse costs if organisations lose a case.

The organisations challenging the Barroso lithium project in Portugal(opens in new window) , and those challenging the projects in Spain(opens in new window) , are bringing the Commission’s rejection of their RIRs before the General Court ₅ of the European Union. In Serbia, further action is reportedly under consideration, depending in part on the outcome of requests for legal financial support. Across interviews, organisations highlighted uncertainty around potential adverse costs ₆ that they might have to pay if they lose.

Simon Simanovski described cost risk as one of the main barriers to litigation: “The cost risk in case of a loss is unpredictable”; and costs “can range from four figures to six figures”, especially where third-party interventions are involved.

This uncertainty alone can deter legal action. As the activists involved in the Norwegian case explained, the decision not to move forward was shaped by financial uncertainty above all: “We didn’t know how much money that would cost. Could we get a lot of costs from the other side? … We decided not to move forward, mostly out of not knowing.”

Applying for legal financial support at the EU level(opens in new window) can provide organisations with additional time and resources to assess their options and, if granted, can help cover part of the costs. But it has its limitations.

For Joám Evans, one of the main practical advantages of applying for legal aid is procedural: “The great advantage of legal aid is that it suspends the deadline for bringing the action.” In his view, legal aid does not remove the financial risk of litigation: “It does not cover adverse costs. If we are ordered to pay € 30,000 in costs, we have to bear them.”

What comes next

Taken together, these first legal challenges of Strategic Projects reveal more than procedural flaws within EU systems. They expose a broader issue at the heart of the EU’s critical minerals strategy.

Through the CRMA, the EU frames access to raw materials for its energy, AI, and defence industries as essential to industrial competitiveness and geopolitical autonomy. But the approach also reproduces a development model centred on extraction, supply security, limited public scrutiny, and restricted participation of affected communities. The model allows for negligible attention to demand reduction or systemic alternatives. By fast-tracking further mining projects, there is a risk of locking in extractive pathways even where environmental, social, and legal concerns remain unresolved.

The result is an increasingly uneven playing field. According to the interviewees, project developers are closely involved in the designation of Strategic Projects and have ample time to prepare and shape the information that reaches the Commission. Communities and CSOs, meanwhile, are left trying to challenge decisions with tight timelines, limited information, poor accountability, financial risks, and uncertain procedural guarantees. This imbalance is built into the system.

The first wave of RIRs has not stopped any projects. But their importance lies elsewhere. These cases are already testing the legal and political boundaries of the CRMA, including how far the Commission’s discretion extends, whether ‘strategic’ status can justify weakening rights, and how EU environmental law stands in a context increasingly driven by claims about geopolitical urgency. Across all interviews, organisations pointed to the wider impact of these legal challenges: laying the groundwork for EU litigation, generating political and public pressure, exposing systemic weaknesses, and feeding into broader advocacy.

As a new wave of Strategic Project designations moves forward, more communities will face decisions about whether and how to engage with the RIR procedures as part of their strategy. Early cases already show both the potential and the limits of this EU procedure.

As litigation progresses with the Spanish and Portuguese cases now before the EU’s General Court, several key questions will come to the fore:

• To what extent can the Commission rely on broad discretion without transparent reasoning?
• Can projects be designated as being ‘in the public interest’ without weakening safeguards?
• Can this framework operate within the boundaries of EU environmental law and fundamental rights?

As ClientEarth explained, one expected outcome would be the General Court clarifying the Commission’s responsibilities and requiring a meaningful assessment of the evidence submitted.

Conclusion

RIR procedures used to challenge Strategic Project designations show that engaging with the CRMA is not just a legal exercise but a strategic one. Organisations have had to work under tight timelines and with limited information and constrained tools while building alliances across jurisdictions. Additionally, the CRMA extends EU influence beyond its borders without ensuring equal access to information, participation, or justice for affected communities outside the EU. Fast-tracking projects while limiting public scrutiny, therefore, is not only risky for environmental safeguards and remedies but also creates unequal procedural playing fields and unbalanced access to justice.

More broadly, these legal disputes raise a fundamental question about Europe’s CRMA and industrial policy: rather than relying on ever-expanding resource extraction, can the EU reduce material demand and transform the sectors that drive mineral consumption?

One thing is clear: although demand for critical minerals and competition for limited resources are rising across various industrial and economic sectors, a more resilient strategy means needing less, reducing material demand, improving sustainable resource management, and transforming the sectors that currently drive mineral consumption.