European Commission adopts ambitious Circular Economy Package

On December 2, 2015, the European Commission adopted an ambitious new Circular Economy Package to stimulate Europe's transition towards a circular economy which will boost global competitiveness, foster sustainable economic growth and generate new jobs.
 
Circular Economy Package is expected to help European businesses and consumers to make the transition to a stronger and more circular economy where resources are used in a more sustainable way. The proposed actions will contribute to ‘closing the loop’ of product lifecycles through greater recycling and re-use, and bring benefits for both the environment and the economy.
 
The plans will extract the maximum value and use from all raw materials, products and waste, fostering energy savings and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The proposals cover the full lifecycle: from production and consumption to waste management and the market for secondary raw materials. This transition will be supported financially by ESIF funding, Euro 650 million from Horizon 2020 (the EU funding programme for research and innovation), Euro 5.5 billion from structural funds for waste management, and investments in the circular economy at national level.
 
The Package has broken down silos in the European Commission and contributes to broad political priorities by tackling climate change and the environment while boosting job creation, economic growth, investment and social fairness. It has been prepared by a core project team co-chaired by first vice president Frans Timmermans and vice president Jyrki Katainen with the close involvement of commissioners Karmenu Vella and Elzbieta Bienkowska.
 
Timmermans, responsible for sustainable development, said, “The circular economy is about reducing waste and protecting the environment, but it is also about a profound transformation of the way our entire economy works. By rethinking the way we produce, work and buy we can generate new opportunities and create new jobs. With this package, we are delivering the comprehensive framework that will truly enable this change to happen. It sets a credible and ambitious path for better waste management in Europe with supportive actions that cover the full product cycle. This mix of smart regulation and incentives at EU level will help businesses and consumers, as well as national and local authorities, to drive this transformation."
 
  The Circular Economy Package gives a clear signal to economic operators that the EU is using all the tools available to transform its economy, opening the way to new business opportunities and boosting competitiveness. The broad measures for changing the full product lifecycle go beyond a narrow focus on the end-of-life stage and underline the Commission's clear ambition to transform the EU economy and deliver results.
 
Innovative and more efficient ways of producing and consuming should increasingly emerge as a result of the incentives put in place by the package. The circular economy has the potential to create many jobs in Europe, while preserving precious and increasingly scarce resources, reducing environmental impacts of resource use and injecting new value into waste products.
 
In December 2014, the Commission decided to withdraw a pending legislative proposal on waste, as part of the political discontinuity exercise carried out for the first Work Programme of the Juncker Commission. The Commission committed at that time to use its new horizontal working methods to present a new package by the end of 2015 which would cover the full economic cycle, not just waste reduction targets, drawing on the expertise of all the Commission's services. The comprehensive package adopted on December 2, 2015 represents a set of tangible, broad and ambitious actions which will be presented during the Commission's term of office.