EU monitoring framework: Economic aspects of the circular economy

The second circular economy action plan for a cleaner and more competitive Europe was adopted by the European Commission in March 2020 as part of the European Green Deal. As part of this, the EU monitoring framework for the circular economy was revised. This monitoring tool can be used to track progress towards a circular economy in the EU and its Member States.

The existing Monitoring Framework did not adequately cover the economic aspects of the circular economy. Eurostat therefore commissioned Prognos and DevStat to develop a methodological framework for collecting economic data on the circular economy, climate change, and the bioeconomy in a way that allows for regular updates. The resulting tool provides data on economic aspects such as production value, jobs, investments and gross value added by companies active in these sectors. These indicators can be used to monitor EU policies.

New monitoring framework: Monitoring progress towards a circular economy

In January 2018, the European Commission adopted the first EU monitoring framework for the circular economy, to help track the progress of the EU and the Member States. Following the launch of the new Circular Economy Action Plan for a cleaner and more competitive Europe, the revised framework captures the focus areas of the circular economy and the interlinkages between circularity, climate neutrality and the “zero pollution” ambition.

The circular economy monitoring framework is split into five thematic areas:

• production and consumption
• waste management
• secondary raw materials
• competitiveness and innovation
• global sustainability and resilience

The revised monitoring framework is based on the priorities of the circular economy in the context of the European Green Deal, the 8th Environment Action Programme, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the EU’s security of supply and resilience goals.

This is what we did

Eurostat commissioned Prognos and DevStat to develop a methodological approach that makes it possible to derive key economic variables to characterise the economic activities relevant to environmental policy: circular economy, climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, and bioeconomy.

The following activities were carried out:

1. Development of a general methodological framework
2. Review of existing approaches to economic measurement of the circular economy and other environmental policy relevant economic sectors
3. Develop a specific approach that can be used by Eurostat for its economic monitoring of the circular economy and other economic sectors
4. Collection and compilation of data

The project also developed an automated data collation tool. This will allow the data set to be regularly updated for the Eurostat database.

Links and downloads

To the circular economy monitoring framework (website Eurostat)

More information (Website Eurostat)

Project team: Jannis Lambert, Robert Norpoth, Richard Simpson

Last update: 15.03.2024