PROJECT RELEVANCE AND CONTEXT
COVID pandemic is the greatest threat of modern economies. The V4 countries were the first in EU to introduce restrictions to prevent thespread of virus, which proves their great responsibility for citizens. Residents stayed home, and the only thing they needed to survive wasfood. It showed that the greatest challenge is to ensure people's safety and access to food, and it requires the provision of raw materials forfood production. The most important raw material needed for the food production is phosphorus (P) which cannot be replaced by any otherelement. It is listed as Critical Raw Materials (phosphate rock, 2014 [COM 297, 2014], white phosphorus, 2017 [COM 490, 2017]). It is anelement essential for human nutrition, used for fertilizer production, limited resource. The key importance of P for people's lives is shownby the fact that if there was no sufficient amount of P in fertilizers, we would be able to exploit only 1/3 of the world's population (out of 64mln residents in V4 only 21 mln could survive). Unfortunately, in V4, there is lack of a mineral deposits of phosphate rock, therefore weneed to cover the demand for the P by import from countries of varying stability, both economic and political as Russia, China, Morocco. Itis risky, if the borders for deliveries of goods are closed, it may be impossible to meet the needs of P. On the other hand, V4 have largesecondary P resources in P-rich waste, which are lost due to P is not recovered and directed to fertilizers. Project aims to build P management roadmap in V4 to secure enough P for food production.
The project is co-financed by the Governments of the Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.
