Top ten deposits account for more than 83 per cent of world lithium resources with a domination of the brines. Estimated 'hard Li deposits' resources were significantly increased recently due to the advanced exploration and discovery of new deposits. World Li resources were estimated by USGS to 105 Mt in 2023. while the Li reserves were doubled in 2023 to 28 Mt compared to 14 Mt in 2016. Brines and crystalline rocks, namely pegmatites and greisens enriched in silicate minerals and/or Li phosphates, are the main source of lithium in the Europe. Granitic pegmatites and rare metals granites (RMG) may be considered as an important Li source as well as the source of many other critical metals, such as Ta, Nb, Sn, Be, Cs, Sc, U, Th and REE. Thus, it is crucial to evaluate the potential and contribution of hard rock lithium deposits to decrease the supply risks of critical materials for the European economy. This work is aiming at evaluation of the processing routes to unlock the 'hard Li' European deposits not only to produce the high-quality Li concentrate (4.0-4.5 per cent Li2O), but also to increase the economic viability of the deposits exploitation by recovering the others critical metals (Ta, Nb, Sn,) and industrial minerals (quartz and feldspar) to reach near zero processing circuit. The flotation is used for most mineral deposits as the main separation method for recovering Li- bearing minerals. There are some alternative methods such dense media separation, magnetic separation, electrostatic separation and ore sorting for the preconcentration of lithium-containing minerals (spodumene, lepidolite, zinnwaldite) from the pegmatites and greisens. The combination of the gravity concentration to recover the Ta-Nb and Sn bearing heavy minerals and flotation to recover the lithium bearing mica (lepidolite) was used in this work to process the rare metals granites from Beauvoir deposit (allier, France) while the processing approach based on the optical sorting and electrostatic separation at coarse size followed by flotation was applied to process the pegmatite ores from Gonçalo deposit (Portugal).