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Aurubis AG

Aurubis is the leading integrated copper group and one of the world's largest copper recyclers.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Adam Romanowski (Cabinet of Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič) and EUROMETAUX and Viohalco SA

9 Dec 2025 · Discussions on the developments in the European and global copper industry

Meeting with Peteris Ustubs (Director Directorate-General for International Partnerships)

6 Oct 2025 · Cooperation on CRM in Uzbekistan

Meeting with Peteris Ustubs (Director Directorate-General for International Partnerships)

29 Sept 2025 · Cooperation on CRM in Uzbekistan

Meeting with Jessika Roswall (Commissioner) and

16 Sept 2025 · Circular Economy

Aurubis urges EU to increase state aid for copper production

5 Sept 2025
Topic — Technical updates to guidelines allowing compensation for higher electricity costs due to ETS.
Message — Available aid should be maintained and increased to compensate for actual costs. They advocate raising the aid intensity to 100% and updating efficiency benchmarks. Compensation should be harmonised across Member States to ensure a level playing field.123
Why — Increased aid would provide financial certainty and help the company remain competitive globally.45
Impact — Already eligible industrial sectors may receive less aid if new sectors are added.67
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Meeting with Christof Lessenich (Head of Unit Energy)

8 Jul 2025 · Exchange of views on current challenges in grid tariff design

Meeting with Heiko Kunst (Head of Unit Climate Action)

8 Jul 2025 · Share views on current ETS rules

Meeting with Dan Nica (Member of the European Parliament) and Heidelberg Materials AG

19 Jun 2025 · Conference GREEN TRANSITION FORUM 5.0: POWERING UP COMPETITIVENESS AND INNOVATION IN THE CEE

Meeting with Léon Delvaux (Director Trade) and EUROMETAUX and

23 May 2025 · Discussion on the availability of copper scrap in the EU market

Meeting with Sara Matthieu (Member of the European Parliament)

23 May 2025 · Company visit and exchange on policy

Meeting with Kerstin Jorna (Director-General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs) and

9 Apr 2025 · Operations in the EU and decarbonisation challenge, Discussion on Clean industrial Deal and the Steel and Metals Action Plan

Meeting with Bruno Tobback (Member of the European Parliament)

3 Feb 2025 · Working visit Aurubis

Meeting with Bruno Tobback (Member of the European Parliament) and International Copper Association Europe and Atlantic Copper S.L.U.

21 Jan 2025 · Situatie in de Belgische en Europese Metallurgie

Meeting with Andreas Glück (Member of the European Parliament)

4 Nov 2024 · Climate and Environment Policy

Meeting with Radan Kanev (Member of the European Parliament)

24 Oct 2024 · Sustainability in the metals sector

Response to EU implementation of recent amendments to the Annexes of the Basel Convention regarding trade in e-waste (2)

3 Jul 2024

We welcome the opportunity to provide feedback on the amendments to the European Waste Shipment Regulation to implement the new entries of the Basel Convention that will apply from the 1st of January 2025 Aurubis is a leading global provider of non-ferrous metals and one of the largest copper recyclers worldwide. The company processes complex metal concentrates, scrap metals, metal-bearing recycling materials, and industrial residues into metals of the highest quality. The recycling of copper scrap and complex recycling raw materials, such as computer circuit boards, is a key business area at Aurubis. Implementation of the Basel codes for e-waste by January 2025 will disrupt markets and material flow within the EU and cause disadvantage for European players in the global market. Applying the prior notification and consent procedure for intra-EU shipments of non-hazardous e-waste, would lead to increased bureaucracy, more time and costs for our operations (e.g. notifications, bank guarantees, issuing and administration of processing certificates). We ask the EU Commission to reconsider the assessment of the alignment of the WSR 2006/1013 with the new e-waste entries under the Basel Convention and to do it only for WSR 2024/1157 We suggest to create an intra-EU waste code for non-hazardous waste for which the information procedure (WSR Annex VII) is maintained. From now until May 2026, when the Art. 27 under the WSR 2024/1157 has to be fully implemented, focus on preparing and introducing the EU digitalised system for documents notifications and more harmonised and streamlined procedures by notifiers and competent authorities. Our position is attached.
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Response to EU implementation of recent amendments to the Annexes of the Basel Convention regarding trade in e-waste

3 Jul 2024

We welcome the opportunity to provide feedback on the amendments to the European Waste Shipment Regulation to implement the new entries of the Basel Convention that will apply from the 1st of January 2025 Aurubis is a leading global provider of non-ferrous metals and one of the largest copper recyclers worldwide. The company processes complex metal concentrates, scrap metals, metal-bearing recycling materials, and industrial residues into metals of the highest quality. The recycling of copper scrap and complex recycling raw materials, such as computer circuit boards, is a key business area at Aurubis. Implementation of the Basel codes for e-waste by January 2025 will disrupt markets and material flow within the EU and cause disadvantage for European players in the global market. Applying the prior notification and consent procedure for intra-EU shipments of non-hazardous e-waste, would lead to increased bureaucracy, more time and costs for our operations (e.g. notifications, bank guarantees, issuing and administration of processing certificates). We ask the EU Commission to reconsider the assessment of the alignment of the WSR 2006/1013 with the new e-waste entries under the Basel Convention and to do it only for WSR 2024/1157 We suggest to create an intra-EU waste code for non-hazardous waste for which the information procedure (WSR Annex VII) is maintained. From now until May 2026, when the Art. 27 under the WSR 2024/1157 has to be fully implemented, focus on preparing and introducing the EU digitalised system for documents notifications and more harmonised and streamlined procedures by notifiers and competent authorities. Our position is attached.
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Meeting with Andreas Glück (Member of the European Parliament)

4 Mar 2024 · ETS

Meeting with Svenja Hahn (Member of the European Parliament) and BUSINESSEUROPE and

21 Feb 2024 · Stakeholder Roundtable on Late Payment Regulation

Meeting with Lukas Visek (Cabinet of Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič) and International Copper Association Europe and

16 Jan 2024 · Clean air

Meeting with Elena Montani (Cabinet of Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius) and International Copper Association Europe and

16 Jan 2024 · Clean air

Aurubis Urges Protection for Copper Industry in ETS Overhaul

21 Dec 2023
Topic — The consultation updates rules for free allocation of greenhouse gas emissions.
Message — Aurubis calls for removing restrictions on fuel benchmarks for chemical energy. They also seek sector-specific benchmarks for industries unable to use biomass fuels.12
Why — This would preserve essential financial support and maintain competitiveness against global rivals.34
Impact — European green energy goals suffer as material dependency on foreign copper increases.5
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Meeting with Peter Liese (Member of the European Parliament)

18 Dec 2023 · Austausch Wahlkreisunternehmen

Meeting with Tiemo Wölken (Member of the European Parliament)

14 Dec 2023 · ETS-Gratiszuteilungen

Meeting with Jens Geier (Member of the European Parliament)

20 Sept 2023 · Exchange on ETS

Meeting with Dimitri Lorenzani (Cabinet of Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič) and EUROMETAUX and

7 Jul 2023 · Critical Raw Materials Act

Meeting with Kerstin Jorna (Director-General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs)

23 Jun 2023 · Present their position on Taxonomy

Meeting with Lina Gálvez (Member of the European Parliament) and Alcoa Nederland

10 May 2023 · Critical Raw Materials Act, Supply of aluminium, copper, zinc, lithium and other metals, Green Pact.

Meeting with Reinhard Bütikofer (Member of the European Parliament)

10 May 2023 · Exchange of views

Meeting with Jens Geier (Member of the European Parliament)

9 May 2023 · Exchange on Critical Raw Materials Act

Aurubis demands inclusion of copper in EU green taxonomy

1 May 2023
Topic — The consultation defines technical criteria for economic activities contributing to EU environmental objectives.
Message — Aurubis calls for the immediate inclusion of copper production criteria within the climate taxonomy. They emphasize that copper is essential for electrification and meeting EU carbon neutrality goals.12
Why — This classification would facilitate access to the private and public funding required for decarbonization.3
Impact — Competing material sectors like aluminium would lose their current regulatory advantage over copper.4
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Meeting with Katherine Power (Cabinet of Commissioner Mairead Mcguinness) and International Copper Association Europe

19 Apr 2023 · Sustainable Finance Taxonomy

Meeting with Andrea Beltramello (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis) and International Copper Association Europe

19 Apr 2023 · Sustainable Finance Taxonomy

Aurubis urges EU to maintain current heavy metal air standards

13 Mar 2023
Topic — The European Commission is revising air quality rules to align with WHO standards.
Message — Aurubis calls for maintaining current heavy metal targets. They request cost-benefit analyses for new standards. They seek time-related derogations for meeting air quality limits.123
Why — Avoiding stricter standards helps the company maintain its global market position.45
Impact — Residents near industrial sites face prolonged exposure due to postponed deadlines.6
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Meeting with Tsvetelina Penkova (Member of the European Parliament)

9 Mar 2023 · Meeting between Mihael MIHOV (APA) and Aurubis

Meeting with Florika Fink-Hooijer (Director-General Environment)

12 Feb 2023 · Visit the Hamburg Aurubis Facility - one of the world’s state-of-the-art primary and secondary copper smelters. Discussion on the topics of Circular Economy and Zero Pollution.

Aurubis Urges Simplified Permitting in Industrial Emissions Revision

23 Jun 2022
Topic — A legislative update aimed at reducing industrial pollution and promoting sustainable economic techniques.
Message — Approval procedures must be shortened and simplified instead of lengthened. The directive should avoid a disproportionate burden for industry and reject requirements for the lowest possible emission limit values.123
Why — This would secure global competitiveness and provide relief through simplifications in approval procedures.45
Impact — Environmental groups lose if mandatory minimum emission levels are rejected in favor of flexible targets.67
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Meeting with Michael Bloss (Member of the European Parliament)

14 Jun 2022 · Industrial Transition

Meeting with Reinhard Bütikofer (Member of the European Parliament)

25 May 2022 · Exchange of views

Meeting with Thierry Breton (Commissioner) and Umicore

21 Apr 2022 · Strategic metals supply and recycling

Response to Protection of workers health from risks related to exposure to lead and di-isocyanates

21 Mar 2022

Aurubis is a leading worldwide provider of non-ferrous metals with smelters in Germany, Bulgaria and Belgium. We process complex metal concentrates and diverse recycling raw materials, being one of the global leaders for copper recycling. We do support the update of the existing EU binding occupational exposure limits for lead. At the same time, it is important that these values are proportional and based on adequate consideration of socio-economic and technical feasibility factors. Copper and lead are carrier metals in both primary production and recycling for many of the metals needed for today’s sustainable technologies. Aurubis’s recycling has state-of-the-art technologies to return highly complex materials to the economic cycle and enable a wide range of metals such as copper, precious metals, lead, tin, nickel , selenium, tellurium to be put to new use. A negative impact on copper and lead metallurgy would endanger the circular economy in the EU, as it would diminish the EU’s capacity to recycle complex materials as well as supply critical metals using its own sources. At Aurubis high environmental, safety and health requirements are implemented on a continuously ambitious level. Our operations comply with the best available techniques and extensive legislation, supported in part by voluntary initiatives, which are designed to protect workers, the general public and the wider environment. We believe biological blood monitoring should be the primary tool for the protection of workers from occupational lead exposures and thus we are committed to ensure the health protective biological limit value of 15μg/dL. An occupational exposure limit for air-born lead of 50 µg/m³or lower would not be a reachable value in lead foundries. Our experience over decades has demonstrated that there is no simple correlation between blood lead concentrations and air levels as factors such as good hygiene practice play an important role. Therefore, we request to either exempt multimetal and lead recycling from the air-born exposure limits or to foresee a transition period of at least 10 years so that the industry is able to adjust. Otherwise excessive cost to comply with unrealistically low exposure levels will have a negative impact on the competitiveness of the EU industry and may lead to loss of recycling capacity of valuable raw materials.
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Response to Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism

18 Nov 2021

Aurubis welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on the CBAM proposal. Aurubis is a leading worldwide provider of non-ferrous metals. We process complex metal concentrates and diverse recycling raw materials. Aurubis is a global leader for copper recycling. The Commission has chosen not to include the copper sector in the scope of the proposed CBAM. We welcome this but are concerned about the intention to extend the scope of CBAM in the future to also cover other ETS sectors. It is unlikely that a Carbon Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) would fulfil the objectives of a level playing field and carbon leakage protection for the EU copper industry. As electro-intensive and price-taker, the EU copper industry is facing eroding profit margins and higher production cost (in particular indirect carbon cost).Thus CBAM dealing with carbon emissions of imported products will not protect the EU producers from reduced global competitiveness. Instead, it will likely create uncertainty , increase trade imbalances and put EU producers at a global competitive disadvantage. Free allocation and indirect cost compensation plays a crucial and irreplaceable role in preserving a level playing field for European copper industry. Please find our position attached.
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Meeting with Gints Freimanis (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis) and Boliden Group and Verein zur Förderung des Bergmannstages, der Rohstoffinitiative sowie der Aus- und Weiterbildung auf dem Gebiet der Rohstoffe

16 Nov 2021 · Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism

Response to Updating the EU Emissions Trading System

8 Nov 2021

Please find attached the feedback from Aurubis. Aurubis is a leading global copper recycler and provider of non-ferrous metals.
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Meeting with Thierry Breton (Commissioner) and

7 Jun 2021 · Pact for skills: re/upskilling needs for a successful green and digital transition in the energy intensive industries ecosystem

Meeting with Andrea Beltramello (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis), Caroline Boeshertz (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis) and

19 Mar 2021 · Due diligence

Response to Commission Decision determining the benchmarks values for free allocation in the period 2021-2025

4 Jan 2021

AURUBIS would like to take the opportunity to submit the attached comments on the draft ETS benchmarks. Aurubis is a leading provider of non-ferrous metals and the global leader for copper recycling. Our remarks are related to the heat and fuel fallback benchmarks that are of utmost importance for the copper sector.
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Response to Revision of the Energy and Environmental Aid Guidelines (EEAG)

10 Dec 2020

Aurubis is a leading worldwide provider of non-ferrous metals and a global leader for copper recycling. Our feedback is provided in the attached file.
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Response to Environmental claims based on environmental footprint methods

31 Aug 2020

Aurubis, a world’s leading manufacturer of non-ferrous metals, welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on the Inception Impact Assessment of the legislative proposal on substantiating green claims. Our recommended options are Option 1 and Option 2. We support the use of life cycle assessment to evaluate the environmental performance of products to avoid making product choices based on single indicators or parts of the lifecycle. We believe that the environmental footprint methodology, has a role to play in driving improvement in the lifecycle performance of products and organizations, as long as it can consistently account for the contribution of products and organizations to a greener and more circular economy. We encourage the EU Commission to further promote robust LCA practice and harmonized methodology in order to avoid proliferation, ensure a high level of consistency and improve comparability of green claims. The Environmental footprint methodology shall be further improved to address present shortcomings and make sure it is robust and lead to appropriate results before it is used in the EU policy. Establishing a voluntary approach to make green claims in accordance with the Environmental Footprint methodology, as a complement to the existing methods is the preferred way forward. Additional information can be found in the attached position paper.
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Meeting with Thierry Breton (Commissioner) and

18 Jun 2020 · Impacts of COVID-19

Response to EU rules on industrial emissions - revision

21 Apr 2020

Summary of recommendations - The Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) is the main EU regulatory instrument dedicated to emissions from industrial installations and related processes. The assessment of coherence with circular economy and climate neutrality set out in the EU Green Deal should not compromise the IED's key objective. - The IED is already in line with the objectives of the European Green Deal and contributes to the Circular Economy and decarbonisation objectives. The BREF process and implementation of BAT supports the performance's improvement of industrial installations in terms of emissions to air and water but also energy efficiency and prevention of waste. However, other aspects related to circular economy, energy efficiency and decarbonisation are better dealt with by other legislation. - Secure an integrated approach for protection of environment as a whole covering emissions to air and water but also generation of waste, use of raw materials, energy efficiency. - Keep the Seville process and further develop it in order to be more transparent and objective but avoid a simplification. - Improvement of the environmental performance shall be achieved in a cost effective way by avoiding disproportionate burden for industry and securing its global competitiveness. - Coherence of policy and realistic objectives between industrial strategy, low carbon transition, protection of environment and human health, circular economy and resource efficiency is essential - As energy intensive industry, we remain committed to develop and implement decarbonization measures. The BREF process provides the possibility to identify the best techniques that contribute to the achievement of climate goals but also deliver improvement of other environmental aspects, and the other way around, abatement techniques that reduce emissions shall not compromise the climate issues. In the spirit of better regulation principles and considering that ETS regulates the GHG emissions, we do not support CO2 performance levels or benchmarks under an IED permitting regime. - The IED already contributes to circular economy objectives. Ensuring that materials are efficiently used and that process residues are reused or recycled could be further supported by enhancing the BREF practise and better implementation of the IED, without changing the actual text of the directive.
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Response to Action Plan on the Customs Union

21 Apr 2020

Aurubis, one of the world's largest copper producer and recycler and provider of many other non-ferrous metals, welcomes the Commission's proposal to update and enhance the Customs Union. The position paper attached outlines the most important issue areas for the company regarding this update, whose objectives are largely aligned with the needs and interests of a sustainable European copper industry. Meanwhile, Aurubis looks forward to participate in the future consultations on this topic.
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Response to Revision of the Energy Tax Directive

1 Apr 2020

Aurubis is Europe’s largest copper producer, the globally largest copper recycler and producer of many other metals. As a highly energy-intensive company, we would like to use the opportunity to outline in attached paper certain impacts and opportunities within this review that could help reconciling climate change mitigation objectives and competitiveness of the energy intensive industry. While these outlines are for now rather broad, we would highly appreciate to participate and to be considered in the future consultation steps. Kind regards
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Meeting with Kilian Gross (Cabinet of Vice-President Günther Oettinger)

11 Oct 2019 · European Competition Policy

Response to Revision of the ETS State aid Guidelines

16 Jan 2019

Please see feedback from AURUBIS AG in the attached document
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Response to Free allocation of emission allowances

23 Nov 2018

Please find the feedback form AURUBIS in the attached document
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Meeting with Maria Asenius (Cabinet of Vice-President Cecilia Malmström), Nele Eichhorn (Cabinet of Vice-President Cecilia Malmström) and

20 Nov 2018 · Methods to achieve access to minerals / sustainability policy

Meeting with Dominique Ristori (Director-General Energy) and European Chemical Industry Council and

8 Jun 2018 · clean energy transition

Meeting with Miguel Arias Cañete (Commissioner) and European Chemical Industry Council and

8 Jun 2018 · Energy transition and the energy intensive industry

Meeting with Dominique Ristori (Director-General Energy)

6 Sept 2017 · Clean Energy for All Europeans package

Meeting with Günther Oettinger (Commissioner)

8 Nov 2016 · Industry 4.0

Meeting with Jyrki Katainen (Vice-President) and

15 Apr 2016 · Steel industry and Chinese MES