Schröder, P., Barrie, J., Chatham House, 2024.

With progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) badly off track, international policymakers are scrambling for solutions that can both revitalize the current SDG agenda and drive more effective action on humanity’s big challenges in the future. The ‘circular economy’ offers clear potential in this area. This wide-ranging concept, which involves making economies less wasteful and less resource-intensive while contributing to human development and well-being, could hold the key to accelerating SDG delivery. A more formal role within the SDGs and any emerging post-2030 successor regime would also provide a catalyst for expansion of the circular economy itself.

ETUI, The European Trade Union Institute, 2024.

According to the authors of Benchmarking Working Europe 2024, the 'revival' of Social Europe has been driven by three factors: the European Pillar of Social Rights; a novel approach to EU spending and temporary relaxing of the EU fiscal framework; and the commitment of the European Green Deal to just transition. While each chapter in this new report highlights how each of these drivers has been essential in relaunching the process of a more social European integration, they also show the inherent fragility of the project. Social progress has also been fragmented and its fruits therefore unevenly distributed, the report flags: the unequal development between ‘old’ and relatively ‘new’ Member States (20 years after the largest enlargement of the EU so far), runs as a red thread throughout this publication.

Schmidt, A.G, Holzmann, S., Wortmann, M., et al., Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2023.

Entnehmen, Verwerten und Entsorgen. Von dieser linearen Logik unseres Wirtschaftens auf das Konzept einer zirkulären Wirtschaft (Circular Economy) umzustellen, verspricht viele ökologische Vorteile.

Ferguson, C. and Stone, S., European Parliamentary Research Service, 2022.

A circular economy minimises waste through reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products. The EU’s circular economy action plan is a step towards reaching the European Union’s 2050 climate neutrality target through measures to normalise sustainable products in the EU, to empower consumers, to cut waste and increase circularity.

Nitsche-Whitfield, P., European Trade Union Institute, 2023.

European economic activity in terms of emissions, resource use, pollution and impacts on biodiversity is ecologically unsustainable. In the face of tipping points soon to be reached and cascading, inter-related ecological crises, the impacts of economic activities need to fall rapidly and substantially to avert disaster. It is no longer possible to decouple growth from ecological impacts sufficiently within the required timespan.

Jensen L., European Parliamentary Research Service, 2023.

This study introduces participants and other stakeholders and interested parties to the debate on going beyond growth. Organised in two parts, the study first presents the status quo, with our reliance on economic growth as the main policy driver and gross domestic product and the second part of the study explores the case for changing the underlying system drivers, and how system transformation may come about.

Brizga J. and El Khadraoui S. (eds), Foundation for European Progressive Studies, 2022.

The Circular Economy and Green Jobs in the EU and Beyond examines what the circular economy means, why the transition from a linear economy to a circular one is important, and how we can achieve it.

Hausemer, P. and Chen, I.B., European Parliament, 2023.

The rise of online sales and marketplaces poses new challenges to product safety, consumer protection, and unfair business practices. At the same time, e-commerce has the potential to facilitate more sustainable production processes and consumption patterns and ensure more circularity. This study provides information on the role of e-commerce in implementing the European Green Deal and makes recommendations for future action.

Schröder, P., Sherman, S. and Barrie, J. Chatham House, 2023.

Circular economy initiatives face a significant gap in the availability of finance. Annual worldwide circular economy spending by the corporate sector is estimated at around $850 billion, compared with $35 trillion spent on existing ‘linear’ economic models.