This report presents the results of a joint research project by the European Investment Bank Group and the European Commission (DG ENV) to assess the circular economy investment gap in the EU.

Annual investments have reached around €120 billion but there is still an investment gap of around €82 billion per year between 2025 and 2040. Gaps are most significant in circular design and end of life infrastructure, and in key sectors such as construction, batteries and vehicles, and textiles. 

The report highlights persistent market failures and investment barriers and outlines how EU regulation can help markets to develop and how coordinated EU and EIB financing and advisory action can mobilise investments and accelerate Europe’s circular transition.

This year’s CGR introduces a new tool: the Value Gap.

This represents the total avoidable value lost through inefficient material use (including energy and food), premature obsolescence and asset deterioration, and partially unpriced externalities. It is an absolute figure that can also be expressed relative to GDP (that is, as euros of avoidable value lost for every euro of value created), indicating how much value is lost for each unit of economic output generated. 

Accounting for the Value Gap alongside GDP would provide a more realistic measure of net value creation by revealing how much economic value is structurally lost to linearity and highlighting the scale of opportunity for circular strategies to retain and recover that value.

This is the Ellen McArthur Foundation's key policy recommendations for the Circular Economy Act.

They argue that by rapidly aligning regulatory requirements and fiscal incentives across the EU single market without further delay, the CEA can enable a European secondary raw materials market and circular business models to succeed, while harmonising environmental and industrial policy goals.

They propose three core policy levers:

1. Build a true EU single market where circular products and secondary materials can move freely.
2. Leverage price and demand signals to make upstream circular solutions the most accessible and affordable choice for buyers.
3. Treat the circular economy as a core industrial strategy to strengthen circular supply and value chains through industrial collaboration.

The Circular Industry Coalition, led by Circul’R and CEA ISEC with the support of the French Ministry of Economy and Finance, brings together nine major industrial companies to address the growing systemic risks facing European industry. 

After a year of collective work, the coalition has published a report highlighting the limits of the linear model and positioning a strong circular economy as a strategic lever for competitiveness, resilience and industrial sovereignty. 

The report provides a shared assessment of industrial vulnerabilities and an operational roadmap to accelerate circular transformation at scale.

Europe generates considerable post-consumer textile waste (around 25kg per person in 2025), but the system captures and qualifies only a fraction for recycling.

This report, prepared by the Boston Consulting Group, finds that: 

• A viable European textile-to-textile system requires major investment but is not deemed to be profitable.
• Enabling mechanisms coordinating the chain and sharing risk are needed to bridge the economics gap. 
• Textile-to-textile recycled fibres are a new product category answering a planetary need for circularity, but with structurally higher prcessing costs. Under current conditions, they will not be cost-competitive with existing recycled routes.

Electric vehicles are rapidly transforming the transportation landscape. Circularity solutions, namely recycling and second-life applications, are central to addressing environmental impacts and securing access to valuable materials in electric vehicle batteries (EVBs).

Consolidating lessons learnt from the BATRAW project, this report identifies three key enabling conditions for scaling up circularity applications for EVBs in the EU: (i) effective implementation of the EU policy framework underpinned by the Batteries Regulation; (ii) strengthened financial support for scaling up battery circularity applications; and (iii) further harmonisation of the standardisation landscape impacting EVB circularity. 

This study explores how social ties and social impact can be accounted for in circular economy initiatives. 

It examines how a local project managing organic waste and unsold goods fosters social ties in a priority urban neighborhood in France, and how these dynamics can be grasped using an alternative qualitative accounting approach. 

It identifies key creators of social ties within local initiatives, proposes a social balance sheet highlighting factors that stimulate or undermine these ties and introduces a methodological approach for counting or recounting social impact in circular economy projects.

Businesses are key drivers of regional transformation. Support from public authorities and cooperation with research institutions, local administrations and networks is key to overcoming barriers and unlocking the potential of the circular economy.

This publication shows how companies in rural regions can drive the transition towards a circular economy. Drawing on examples from German and European model regions, it highlights how local enterprises implement circular business models, what opportunities arise for regional value creation and resilience, and which policy and governance frameworks can foster this transformation.

The findings show that the circular economy is not only an ecological necessity but also a strategic pathway towards sustainable and resilient regional development.

Bio-based plastics are wholly or partly derived from biomass and so help reduce reliance on fossil fuel-based plastics.

Feedstocks include primary and secondary sources. Agricultural and forestry residues and post-consumption organic waste have lower environmental impacts than primary feedstock but collection and transportation issues make scaling up a challenge.

As a whole, the sector is struggling to achieve real scale: bio-based plastics account for only 0.5% of global plastics production and are projected to reach 1% by 2030. 

Scaling is hampered by feedstock sustainability, competitiveness, technological maturity and cost: currently, producing bio-plastic is generally 1.5 to 2 times more expensive than conventional plastics.

This briefing presents key air pollutant trends and projections for energy-intensive industries in Europe. 

It looks at how greenhouse gas emissions have fallen over the past two decades, but improvements in this area have stalled in the last ten years. Further progress will require the implementation of environmental legislation and transformative change in emission-intensive processes.

The briefing also looks at decarbonisation and circularity. Both approaches, particularly electrification, offer significant co-benefits for pollution prevention. A clear understanding of these co-benefits and risks should be used to guide investments and maximise environmental, health and competitiveness gains.