Circular economy- Silver bullet for the EU's competitiveness and sustainability?

Businesses need to be able to see the economic case for recovering and reusing materials in order for the circular economy to take off in Europe, Jyrki Katainen, European Commission Vice-President responsible for jobs, growth, investment and competitiveness said in a ‘Conversation with’ Friends of Europe on 25 January.

“We must enable businesses to see a profit if they move to the circular model of economy,” he said. “Market economy is the best friend of circular economy.”

The discussion focused on the latest Circular Economy Package released by the Commission in December, with the aim to make Europe into a global centre for sustainable and environmentally-friendly industries, reduce dependence on raw materials and create new jobs. The initiative will be supported by an array of EU financing tools, ranging from the Horizon2020 budget to structural and strategic investment funds.

Currently, much of the relevant regulation is done at national level, which gets in the way of circular economy business models, Katainen said. “One of our core interests is to harmonise national regulations on secondary raw materials in order to create a well-functioning single market.” Clean public procurement could also enable the use of more sustainable products.

Empowering consumers will be an important aspect of the transition. Shoppers are used to seeing energy efficiency labels on electrical goods. “Now we want to widen the scope from energy consumption to other areas of the circular economy,” Katainen said. “There should be labelling of how resource-efficient a product is.”

View tweets from the event using #ConversationWith.