CCRI’s recommendations for the Circular Economy Act
Published on 14.04.2026
The 8th edition of the CCRI R&I Gaps and Policy Report lays out clear, actionable policy recommendations to help shape the upcoming EU Circular Economy Act (CEA). Drawing on insights from extensive multi-stakeholder dialogue, the report highlights the key challenges cities and regions face, and translates them into concrete proposals to accelerate Europe’s circular transition on the ground.
EU frames, cities and regions act
The report puts forward a set of prioritised policy recommendations aimed at ensuring that the Circular Economy Act effectively supports implementation at local and regional level. These recommendations reflect recurring challenges identified across CCRI projects and territories.
Key recommendations include:
Leveraging public procurement to drive circular markets:
Promote circular public procurement through binding requirements, revising the Public Procurement Directive to include a “duty to motivate” for circularity, prioritising best price-quality ratios, and standardised life-cycle costing (LCC).
Transforming EPR to incentivise circular design and waste prevention:
Reorient EPR frameworks to prevent waste by linking eco-modulated fees to verified digital product passport (DPP) data, streamlining compliance, and encouraging higher-level R-strategies like professional repair.
Harmonising end-of-waste (EoW) criteria and the waste hierarchy:
Activate Article 6 of the Waste Framework Directive with binding acts to harmonise EoW criteria for high-impact streams via a fast-track mechanism, ensuring legal certainty for cross-border trade and long-term investment.
Stimulating demand for secondary raw materials (SRM):
Introduce a dedicated VAT category for certified recycled products and phased, product-specific mandates for strategic materials like steel, aluminium, and critical raw materials to narrow the price gap with virgin inputs.
Optimising WEEE recovery through targeted incentives and design:
Reduce electronic waste leakage with deposit-return schemes (DRS) for small electronics, enforce design-for-disassembly, and strengthen collection, storage, and treatment frameworks with mandatory standards and safety-by-design EPR financing.
Mainstreaming regional cooperation and industrial-urban symbiosis (IUS):
Scale circularity through place-based innovation ecosystems, aligning cohesion policy with circular objectives, and investing in local administrative capacity to orchestrate complex resource exchanges.
These recommendations are designed to ensure that the Circular Economy Act is place-based, implementable, and responsive to real territorial needs, ultimately accelerating Europe’s transition to a circular economy.
Background and process
The report builds on insights gathered over several months through the CCRI community, including workshops, consultations, and exchanges with cities, regions, industry, research organisations, and EU-level stakeholders. This iterative and collaborative process ensured that the recommendations are grounded in practical experience and reflect the diversity of challenges and opportunities across European territories.
large 500 000-200 000, medium 200 000-50 000, and small cities 50 000-5 000
predominantly urban regions, intermediate and predominantly rural regions, refer to TERCET typology NUTS 3 region
