Forty-Nine Molecules Europe Says It Cannot Lose

The EU's Critical Chemicals Alliance put its working-group reports up for endorsement on Thursday, and one of them carries a table: forty-nine molecules with a CN8 code against each, the starting list for priority trade defence in Q1 2027 and a dedicated state aid framework asked for by the end of this year. Forty of the forty-nine are bulk. The report says in writing that its own method cannot see specialty chemicals, and that the fix waits on CN2028.

On March 11 last year, eight EU governments sent the Commission a paper whose title reads like a distress call: the alarming situation of the European chemicals industry, a strategic sector that needs a dedicated EU Critical Chemicals Act.

They attached the molecules they meant, close to twenty of them, ethylene and butadiene and benzene and methanol among the names.

Germany did not sign it.

A year and a half later, on Thursday, at Creutzwald in eastern France, that paper's exercise delivered. Four working groups put their final reports to the EU Critical Chemicals Alliance for endorsement, and one of them carries a table.

Forty-nine molecules, by our count, with a CN8 code printed against each. Every molecule those eight governments named in 2025 came out critical under the new framework.

"If Brussels is writing down which plants it intends to keep, which of your suppliers is on the paper?"

The rest of this brief is for subscribers.