From Tungsten to Lithium: Eight Decades of Critical Raw Materials Frameworks and the Sustainability Agenda in the European Union and the United States

Critical raw materials (CRMs) sit at the intersection of industrial strategy, climate policy, sustainable development, and geopolitics. This paper reviews how the concept has evolved since the 1939 US Strategic and Critical Materials Stock Piling Act, tracing the gradual addition of economic, energy, technological, environmental, and sustainability criteria to the original military framing. It then compares the methodologies developed by the European Union and the United States over the last fifteen years. The EU has published five consecutive lists between 2010 and 2023; the US has produced parallel frameworks through the U.S. Geological Survey and the Department of Energy, each weighing supply risk, economic importance, environmental impact, and clean energy relevance differently. The 2023 EU list is examined in detail, including the addition of copper and nickel on strategic rather than quantitative grounds. Convergences and divergences across the three frameworks are discussed, alongside their alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals—particularly SDG 7, SDG 9, SDG 12, and SDG 13—and the progressive integration of circular economy targets, recycling indicators, and environmental impact considerations into criticality assessment. The analysis shows that sustainability has become a structural axis of CRM policy rather than a peripheral concern. The review provides the methodological background for a companion paper that applies the EU methodology to resource-rich Latin American countries (Chile, Brazil, and Peru).