Achieving a more circular economy, with increased recycling and reuse of products, has been a stated goal of the European Union for over a decade. A myriad of legislation has been adopted to reach these goals, but Europe is still only making slow progress.

Former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker first adopted a Circular Economy Action Plan in 2015, and this was followed by the New Circular Economy Action Plan adopted by his successor Ursula von der Leyen in 2020.

“I think we all know that we’ve been working on the Circular Economy for a long time – so why haven’t we seen a big positive impact yet?” asked Salla Ahonen, Executive Vice President for Sustainability and Communications at Finnish packaging company Huhtamäki, at a policy conference at the Finnish representation to the EU this week in Brussels.

“This is at least the third commission coming out with a circular economy something. So we need to look at, where are the problems so far. We need to understand what are the bottlenecks,” she remarked.

President von der Leyen signalled last year that it is time for the EU to move past action plans and adopt a dedicated piece of legislation for the circular economy. In the political guidelines she issued last summer, she said the Commission will propose a circular Economy Act in 2026.

Competitiveness Compass

According to the Competitiveness Compass published by the Commission last week, it will serve to catalyze investment in recycling capacity and encourage the EU industry to effectively substitute virgin materials.

“We have been working on this project since last summer, but the driving force already at that time was competitiveness and economic development of our European industries,” Wolfgang Trunk, a policy officer at the Commission’s environment department, told the event.

A big focus, he said, will be streamlining and harmonizing requirements from various pieces of legislation to make things easier for small businesses to comply, while still retaining effectiveness. “I can tell you now with the new college, the new commissioner for the environment is keen to have the focus on simplification and administrative burden issues,” he said.

As a potential example, he cited waste reporting obligations. “We’ve made a new inventory of the reporting obligations in place due to waste legislation. This is so massive, and then you compare on the other side with how this data is utilized, which is collected at a very high cost.”

Concerns EC is going soft

But environmental NGOs are raising concerns that the new act is going to go too easy on businesses and national governments, and they cite as an example the Commission’s seeming hesitance to have new targets in the legislation.

Representatives of the Finnish and Belgian governments speaking at the event said new targets are needed.

“I was pleased to hear from both Belgium and Finland they’re calling for targets, but we’ve seen a shyness from the Commission in setting circular economy targets,” Marco Musso, a policy officer with the NGO European Environment Bureau, said; noting that he is concerned that the act will focus only on recycling and managing waste and not set targets for overall decreases in resource use.

“We see a risk of a very narrow focus on waste management and recycling,” said Musso, “How will we measure success? Just that we created larger markets for ever-growing amounts of waste? We want a circular economy strategy that delivers a solution to the problem of systemic overconsumption.”

On new targets, Trunk confirmed that there is indeed hesitation in the Commission for targets beyond the product level.

“In our early warning report we see a majority of member states do not cope with these recycling rates that we give as targets,” he said. “This is the dilemma I always mention. The responsibility for compliance for a government to reach a target is very indirect. What is the leverage? So, we are a little bit reluctant.”

“We want to see a shift to product-based targets,” he said. “You have much more leverage if you go on the product level, the responsibilities are clear.”

He added that product collection targets need to be better enforced before thinking about new ones.

Mandatory separate collection

Trunk remarked: “Separate collection is the key at the beginning of the value chain. Currently, we know we have a mandatory separate collection but there are exemptions for member states. Here we want to see where can we be more restrictive with these member states when it comes to waste management.”

Maija Pohjakallio, vice president for climate and the circular economy at Finnish forest industry group Metsä, said at the event that her industry would like to see a focus in the Circular Economy Act on the creation of renewable carbon.

She noted that for certain sectors, decarbonizing materials will be impossible – “but what is possible is to make the carbon atoms from sustainable sources.” She said targets in this respect would be of interest, for instance, a possible 20% objective of carbon-based raw materials used to make chemicals and materials coming from non-fossil sources.

“We can de-fossilize the materials sector,” she said. “We always need some virgin materials in the loop, but that can be made in a regenerative way.”

Pohjakallio remarked that the regional forestry sector could play a key role in providing circular input into those material value loops. Trunk said the Commission is looking into this. “We are clearly in favour of defossilization, that means less fossil carbon in our circles,” he said. “Here we want to bring up the bio-based carbon in our economies.”

Slowing resource use

Musso stressed that Europe should capitalize on some of the success that it has achieved so far, with it being the leader among developed countries for slowing resource use, which has declined in the EU over the last decade, decoupling from economic growth.

Waste generation has also decreased, with total per capita waste falling by 4.2% in the EU between 2010 and 2020. The EU has a recycling rate of 11.6%, higher than most regions globally. The EU has the lead globally on recycling technologies for heavy industry, textiles and construction.

This has in part been due to the many pieces of legislation adopted as part of the EU Green Deal, including the Critical Raw Materials Act, the Taxonomy Regulation, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and the Right to Repair Directive.

However, resource use and waste generation have dropped by less than 5% and the decline has plateaued in recent years. In 2022, the average per capita CO2 material footprint in the EU 27 was 14.9 tonnes—900 kg more per person than in 2013.

“Over the past decade the EU has made significant progress in driving policy to make a circular economy,” said Musso. “But reality shows us the progress isn’t sufficient. There’s been less than a 1% increase since 2010 in reuse. The total material footprint of EU is still largely exceeding planetary boundaries.”

[Edited By Brian Maguire | Euractiv’s Advocacy Lab ]