Monitoring of the circular economy across the EU

The European Commission DG RTD (Research and Innovation) has commissioned a consortium of four partners to deliver this 18-month research project to identify and develop potential improvements on the monitoring of the circular economy across the EU. The project stems from an appreciation that, whilst the circular economy is an essential part of the global transition to climate neutrality, the current monitoring and reporting frameworks and activities do not adequately capture the full scale and impact of circular economy activity. Traditional monitoring efforts have focussed on quantity and quality of recycling efforts, without fully appraising the levels and landscape of activities higher up the ‘circularity ladder’ such as circular design, reuse, repair and remanufacturing.

The project will rectify this by identifying, assessing and developing, through an extended period of practical testing and analysis, new indicators to measure three facets of circularity across the region, at EU, Member State, regional and individual industry levels:

Current levels of circularity
Progress over time
Triple-bottom-line impacts

Indicators to understand these facets will be investigated to develop a fuller understanding of the circularity situation across the EU’s five key policy focus areas:

Cities and regions
Households
Bioeconomy
Product-service systems
Priority products

The delivery consortium consists of Ricardo, Ecorys, Norion Consult and IEEP. They are leading a phased project which to date has involved a policy framework and literature review, and the collation of a long-list of all indicators currently in-use and potential new options from cutting-edge academic and industry-led thinking. These were augmented with an extensive stakeholder engagement exercise to fill any gaps in knowledge and insight.

The long-list has undergone a series of analyses to select a number of short-lists for each of the focus areas listed above, based on the relevance, practicality and potential value to policy makers. The short-lists for each focus area are now being tested and developed.

The results of the testing periods will be collated into case study reports, and assessed in terms of the indicators’ actual usefulness for informing policy decisions. The case studies will be complemented with a series of recommendations including suggested targets and data collection plans for selected indicators and wider regulatory policy and research and innovation roadmaps. The ultimate output will be a ‘toolbox’ suite of reports, case-studies and assessment tools to help policy makers make informed decisions on future direction and interventions to drive effectively towards a true circular economy across the European Union.

The Commission supports this research project on improving the monitoring of the circular economy across the EU and your participation in this exercise.

Many thanks in advance for your support.

European Commission
DG Research & Innovation
B.1 Green Transitions

http://ec.europa.eu/research