CALL FOR EVIDENCE

FOR AN INITIATIVE (without an impact assessment)

Title of the initiative

Circular economy – revision of the monitoring framework

Lead DG – responsible unit

DG ENV – Green Knowledge & Research Hub, LIFE (A3)

ESTAT – Environmental statistics and accounts; sustainable development (E2)

Likely Type of initiative

Non-legislative

Indicative Timing

Q2-2022

Additional Information

Monitoring framework for the circular economy adopted in 2018: COM(2018) 29 and SWD(2018) 17, Monitoring framework - Circular economy - Eurostat (europa.eu).

A new Circular Economy Action Plan ‘For a cleaner and more competitive Europe’, COM(2020) 98

A. Political context, problem definition and subsidiarity check

Political context

A monitoring framework for the circular economy measures EU progress towards a circular economy and helps determine whether EU and national policies and action are contributing to circular economy.

In 2018, as announced in the 2015 circular economy action plan, the Commission adopted a monitoring framework 1 to assess progress towards a more circular economy and the effectiveness of action at EU and national level. The framework includes 10 indicators covering four dimensions: production and consumption, waste management, secondary materials, and competitiveness and innovation. The current framework is available on a dedicated website.

In 2020, the Commission adopted the Communication A new Circular Economy Action Plan For a cleaner and more competitive Europe 2 as part of the European Green Deal.

The revision of the circular economy monitoring framework is one action included in the new circular economy action plan (Section 8 on monitoring progress).

Problem the initiative aims to tackle

The revision of the monitoring framework aims to improve measuring progress towards a circular economy, in line with the European Green Deal ambitions. The 2020 circular economy action plan announced two objectives for this revision.

1)New indicators will consider the focus areas in the action plan and of the links between circularity, climate neutrality and the EU's zero pollution ambition. These indicators will rely on European statistics as much as possible.

2)Indicators on resource use will be further developed and linked to monitoring and assessing progress towards decoupling economic growth from resource use and its impact in the EU and beyond. These indicators will include consumption and material footprints – these will account for material consumption and the environmental impact associated to our production and consumption patterns.

The initiative responds to requests from other EU institutions (European Parliament 3 , Council 4 , European Economic and Social Committee 5 and Committee of the Regions 6 ) and stakeholders 7 asking for better coverage of the production stage of the economic cycle by including, for example, footprint indicators.

The Commission considers further documents about measuring the circular economy 8 . 

Basis for EU action (legal basis and subsidiarity check)

Legal basis

The EU’s right to act is based on Articles 173 and 191 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union

referring respectively to the conditions necessary for the competitiveness of the EU's industry and the objectives of EU environmental policy.

Practical need for EU action

The main problems tackled by this initiative cannot be addressed through exclusive action by Member States. This would most likely lead to different methods, incomparable information and an impossibility to calculate aggregated indicators for the EU, not allowing for an overview of the situation and making it difficult to measure progress towards a circular economy at EU level.

The revision of the EU monitoring framework plans to use harmonised indicators and data sources at EU and Member State level, ensuring comparability in tracking performance across Member States.

B. What does the initiative aim to achieve and how

The objectives of the revision are to improve how the circular economy monitoring framework informs policy and to integrate new sources of information that have become available since 2018. The monitoring framework needs to be updated to reflect new activities and context and improve the link with other priority initiatives under the European Green Deal, in particular on climate and pollution. New indicators will respond to the strong demand from other EU institutions and stakeholders to better cover production in the economic cycle.

The revised framework will also pave the way for a more complete assessment of the effectiveness of action at EU and national level, identifying best practices, differences of performance in specific areas and any possible needs requiring further action.

The framework will be developed in close cooperation with the European Environment Agency (EEA) and in consultation with Member States, and will aim to address links between the circular economy and climate change and the overall impact of consumption and material use. It will consider the Bellagio principles to monitor the circular economy, adopted in December 2020 by the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) and the EEA.

The new framework will include newly available indicators from official data sources such as Eurostat and the Joint Research Centre, without additional administrative burden for Member States. The update of the monitoring framework may also consider removing existing indicators, in particular data that do not exist or are insufficient. The revision will be consistent with other EU indicator sets, in particular the EU Sustainable Development Goals indicators and the monitoring framework for the 8th environment action programme 9 , currently under development: where possible, indicators should be aligned to increase comparability and to avoid a proliferation of indicators. All indicators included in the monitoring framework will meet the RACER criteria (relevant, acceptable, credible, easy, robust).

Likely impacts

By ensuring wide acceptance, the initiative will serve as the reference point for Member States and the EU. The Commission does not intend to increase the administrative burden on Member States. The data for the new indicators already exist, either coming from existing official reporting from Member States or based on scientific data from the research community.

Future monitoring

The Commission welcomes the views from other EU institutions and stakeholders on the revised monitoring framework.

C. Better regulation

Impact assessment

The revision process directly involves key EU data providers, like Eurostat, the Joint Research Centre and the EEA, with a view to identifying existing indicators and/or using existing data to produce new indicators, possibly considering estimates based on data modelling.

Overall, as most indicators already exist, this initiative creates neither significant administrative burden nor other significant impacts which would necessitate an impact assessment.

Consultation strategy

This call for evidence gives stakeholders and the public the opportunity to provide their input.

In anticipation of the review of the monitoring framework, the Commission consulted Member States through the Working Group on Environmental Accounts in May 2021. This group deals with statistics measuring material flows in the economy – it is chaired by Eurostat, and Member States’ national statistical institutes are members. The working group provided technical feedback on the indicators. The documents for this working group meeting, including comments by Member States, are publicly available.

The Expert Group on Resource Efficiency and Integrated Product Policy/Sustainable Consumption and Production and the Raw Materials Supply Group were also both consulted in June 2021. In May 2021, a workshop bringing together the EEA, the European Environment Information and Observation Network (EIONET) and the European Topic Centres discussed a co-creation process for circular economy monitoring, and the European Commission also presented its approach.