European Metals has elected Inge Hofkens, Chief Operations Officer for Multimetal Recycling at Aurubis, as President.
Hofkens succeeds Evangelos Mytilineos, Executive Chairman of Metlen, as President and will begin her two-year term immediately.
The change in leadership took place during the association's General Assembly on Wednesday, 1 July 2026, hosted at Metlen’s headquarters in Maroussi, Greece.
The event marked the conclusion of a successful four-year tenure for Mytilineos, who served two consecutive terms at the helm of the organisation.
The handover was attended by Stellina Siarapi, Secretary General for Private Investments at the Ministry of Development; Aleksandra Kordecka, member of the office of European Commission; Stéphane Séjourné, Executive Vice-President for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy; and senior executives from European Metals member companies.
Mytilineos said: ‘Over the past four years, it has been my great privilege and honour to lead the European non-ferrous metals industry in its work to improve the policy situation for our sector.
“We have seen great strides taken at the EU level with the delivery of the Critical Raw Materials Act, the Steel and Metals Action Plan, the Clean Industrial Deal, and more recently the Industrial Accelerator Act.
“But there is still a lot of work to do on energy costs, on the Emissions Trading System, the CBAM and importantly on circularity in the metals sector including addressing the record volumes of aluminium and copper scrap leaking from the EU to our global competitors.”
Hofkens said: “I am grateful to the members of European Metals for placing their trust in me to lead the association in this vibrant moment.
“We have crucial policies for our sector coming up in the next few months, not least the Circular Economy Act, which must deliver on multiple opportunities for metal recycling, processing, and refining in Europe in answer to the strongly growing metal demand and desired raw material resilience.
“This is a huge potential source for critical raw materials that today are left untapped.
“As demand for critical raw materials grows and Europe's need for resilience becomes more urgent, unless we strengthen Europe's processing and smelting capacities, critical raw materials will continue to flow to competing economies, where the economic value, strategic resilience and industrial competitiveness they generate will increasingly accrue elsewhere.
“We need to take swift action to address the loss of scrap copper and other strategic metals from the EU.
“It will be my priority to make sure that our European metals industry has the best possible policy framework to thrive in Europe.’
