Over the past decades, manufacturing and supply chains have become increasingly complex and globalised for some critical chemicals, e.g. raw materials, intermediates, active pharmaceutical ingredients. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that the limited number of suppliers for some chemicals used in essential societal applications may pose risks, for example to the availability of medicines and to EU’s capacity to respond to health crises. EU’s resilience to supply disruptions is not only key to guarantee availability of chemicals used in health applications but also for achieving the overall sustainability goals as set in the European Green Deal, including technologies for climate neutrality, such as batteries, wind turbines and photovoltaics, for clean material circularity and for the zero pollution ambition.

 A more resilient economy and healthcare systems requires the existing chemical production capacity in the EU to thrive, sufficiently diversified sources of supply and a better management of the risk of disruption at all levels, strategic reserves and stockpiling, as well as mechanisms to ensure that supply chains can continue to operate unaffected in case of a crisis.

Source: European Commission

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