In December 2015, the European Commission published the new Circular Economy Package, containing a host of initiatives to reduce waste and to increase the longevity of products and materials, but it failed to set a headline target for reducing the EU’s use of resources. Such a target could help to increase political attention and visibility of the issue, stimulate long-term ambitions and streamline the action of all actors – both public and private – towards reducing the consumption of natural resources.
In order to gain political support for such a target, this CEPS Policy Brief highlights two preconditions that need to be obtained:
Meeting these two preconditions will considerably ease the introduction of a policy mix aimed at fostering more circular business models.
In the EU, resource efficiency has been high on the political agenda since 2011, when the European Commission first included it as one of the seven flagship initiatives in its Europe 2020 Strategy for “smart, sustainable and inclusive growth”.
The ‘circular economy’ is gaining momentum as a concept in both academic and policy circles, and circular business models have been linked to significant economic benefits.
Transforming the linear economy, which has remained the dominant model since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, into a circular one is by no means an easy task.