European Commission - Directorate General for Energy
European Commission - Directorate General for Energy
04/21/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/21/2026 06:55
Experts call for EU policies on advanced materials to prioritise autonomy, safety, sustainability, and prosperity
Today the Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) has released the Evidence Review Report and Scientific Opinion on Advanced Materials.
Advanced materials are crucial for Europe's autonomy, competitiveness, and resilience. However, even though Europe has a strong foundation in science and established regulatory practices, there are structural challenges that hinder the transition from materials discovery to their safe, sustainable, and competitive use.
In this context, following a request from Ekaterina Zaharieva, Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, the Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) has published this Scientific Opinion, which emphasises that policies for advanced materials should focus on EU values like autonomy, safety, sustainability, and prosperity.
The key recommendations are:
- ensure that policies for advanced materials prioritise EU values related to autonomy, safety, sustainability, and prosperity
- support the creation of data spaces for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data, digitalisation, AI and computational methods for accelerating safe-and-sustainable advanced materials research and commercialisation
- design standards for advanced materials to support safety and sustainability at every level of technology development and facilitate market access
- strengthen ecosystems that effectively develop, coordinate and support initiatives to accelerate R&D uptake by the market
- invest to expand EU strengths in research and innovation on advanced materials
Together, these recommendations will contribute to shaping the forthcoming Advanced Materials Act, the EU initiative designed to strengthen Europe's industrial leadership, strategic autonomy, and competitiveness in advanced materials.
Background
Advanced materials are designed to deliver superior performance for specific functionalities. They include, for example, superconducting materials for use in computers, biomaterials for drug delivery inside the human body, and materials that store or distribute energy in a far more efficient manner.
The Scientific Advice Mechanism (SAM) provides independent scientific evidence and policy recommendations to the College of European Commissioners on any subject, including on issues that the European Parliament and the Council consider to be of major importance. The SAM comprises the Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA ) which brings together Europe's academies and Academy Networks to review and synthesise evidence and the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors (GCSA), seven eminent scientists whose role is to make policy recommendations.
More information
Summary of the Scientific Opinion on Advanced Materials
ERC: Frontier research for advanced materials
Towards the Advanced Materials Act
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