EU announces new EU Circular Economy Resource Centre

An upcoming EU Circular Economy Resource Centre under the Global Gateway strategy will facilitate peer-to-peer exchanges and partnerships between EU and third-country stakeholders, fostering the uptake of sound circular economy policies and business models worldwide. European Commissioner for International Partnerships Jutta Urpilainen announced the new action a €15 million commitment from the European Commission during the World Circular Economy Forum (#WCEF2024) in Brussels. 

“It is possible to make circularity the next megatrend. The vision behind the Circular Economy Resource Centre is to share policy and business know-how and best practices with partner countries,” states Jutta Urpilainen, European Commissioner for International Partnerships.

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The EU Circular Economy Resource Centre embodies EU’s commitment to advancing circularity on a global scale and facilitating the transition towards sustainable, climate-neutral societies. The four-year action will mobilise EU Circular Economy know-how, policies and standards, technologies, business models and practices, to promote learning and exchanges with partners in the Neighbourhood, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It intends to set up:

• A Circular Economy Knowledge Lab that documents and consolidates EU circular economy knowhow from partner country lenses and makes it available to partner country stakeholders through a knowledge platform and helpdesk, dialogue and exchange of experiences, good practices, learnings, and innovative approaches.
• A Circular Economy Policy Lab offering assistance on policy and regulatory matters through technical assistance, exchange of best practices and acceleration programmes to inspire policy and regulatory development.
• A Circular Economy Business Lab, supporting partner country businesses to go circular, through peer-to-peer exchanges, circular economy market outlooks, and benchmarking assessments. It will also showcase innovative circular solutions and facilitating matchmaking with EU companies, with special attention to women and youth entrepreneurs.

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Background

The EU Circular Economy Resource Centre financed under EU’s Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) – Global Europe Programme, will promote learning and exchanges with partner countries towards accelerating the global transition to the Circular Economy. The action is under development and is co-created with Sitra and Enabel. 

The Global Europe Instrument for the period 2021-2027, which integrated the Green Deal as one of the key EU policy priorities, has helped scaling up our support. On circular economy, the EU has committed some €1.6 billion (2021-2023) to over 75 actions contributing to support the circular economy transition at country, regional and global levels. In 2023 alone, over 100 partner countries have benefited from EU support to promote a circular transition of their economies.

The initiatives align with the objectives of the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) which seeks to reduce consumption footprints and double Europe’s circular material use rate within the next decade, in line with the goals of the European Green Deal.