Assessing the circular economy disparities across european countries

Abstract

The circular economy is gaining traction as a way to strike a balance between economic growth and environmental sustainability. The European Union (EU) in particular has high hopes of increasing competitiveness, promoting economic growth and, in the meantime, decreasing environmental consequences and resource dependency. This study analyses the circular economy, between and within the European Union 27, using data covering the years from 2015 to 2019. Giving the multidimensionality of the circular economy phenomenon and the number of observations for this study, multivariate statistical methods were applied, namely a factor and a cluster analysis. The results led us into two main circularity dimensions - sustainability and productivity - and three groups of EU countries – optimizers, sustainable and laggards. We find that there are discrepancies in the European Union's implementation of circular economy. Findings suggest that while the European gap in circular economy is narrowing in one dimension – productivity – it appears to be widening in another – sustainability. Furthermore, countries have yet to strike a balance between sustainability and productivity dimensions, meaning that efforts should be made to achieve homogeneous progress, focusing on all economic sectors.